My alarm woke me up but I stayed in bed until I heard the lovely sound of our Royal Mail guy who blasts his radio in his van, pull up outside. I knew it was going to be for us so I shot downstairs wrapped in a towel to get the door before he tried to bang it down. At least it got me out of bed.
I did my run, workout and shower before anyone else got up. 👍. The fresh air and running around certainly helped the little 2 to sleep better.
Once everyone was settled after breakfast I went to the local card shop to pick up Ellis' birthday balloons and then dropped in to Saskia's house to borrow some cake tins. I stopped for a very quick cuppa and catch up which was lovely.
My Garmin watch which records all my runs hasn't been syncing up to my computer for a number of days and I finally got around to looking at it today. Turns out it just needed a reboot but by doing this it lost all the data so I have a few records missing. I was strangely not bothered about it. 🤷
After lunch Jodie came over to drop off Alfie who is staying over as a treat for Ellis' birthday. She stayed for a cuppa which was so nice as I haven't seen her properly since before lockdown started. We talked, the kids played.
Shortly after they left I started the cake. It's actually 6 cakes and although it doesn't take long to make the mixture, the time consuming bit is making up the different colours, getting it into cake tins, then taking them out, cleaning the tins and doing it all again. Then you have to put it all together, chill it for a bit and then finish it off. It's total bullshit what it says on the recipe of 1 hour 50 minutes. 😬
Rob sorted out dinner for Leo and Oscar and amended his study to turn it into a games room for Ellis and Alfie. They were so happy and played in there for a couple of hours, only coming out for a drink, a quick go on the trampoline, shower and bed time.
I felt a bit bad for Leo today. Ellis had Alfie, Oscar was chatting to Josie and playing online games but Leo was just sort of on his own, mostly sat on his bed or building stuff on Minecraft. I suppose it was good for him to have a quiet day and I think he will join in with the airsoft party tomorrow so that will be good.
Presents wrapped finally, a few decorations up and last pictures as a 12 year old done. It's 1:34am and I'm wide awake. It's always like this on birthday eves, kind of like Christmas Eve. God it won't be long until it is! Well the thought of that has at least made me tired.👍
I'll add the travel diary bit tomorrow as typing this in bed on a laptop and I need to do it on my Mac.
I really hope teenagers sleep in on their birthdays. 🤞
Where they to? - 4th August Calgary
The travel agent said that she was sorry that we were staying in Calgary for 2 nights. On first impressions, she's not as sorry as we are. The Rough Guide book described our hostel as being in the "seedy part of town". It didn't mention that the tramp population of the town converges on the lawn and benches beneath the bedroom windows to abuse whatever substances they could lay their hands on and to exchange bodily fluids. They lounge about bellowing incomprehensible slurs at passers-by and occasionally have a rummage through their shopping trollies, presumably to make sure that they didn't miss anything off their list when they made the weekly trip to Safeway's.
The bus journey here was comfortable enough, it felt like a walk in the park compared to the bus journey of a few days ago. Actually, perhaps that was a bad turn of phrase. Seeing the Rocky Mountains disappear slowly over the horizon was a serene sight. The first monumental landmark of our trip was behind us. Right now, it feels like we've done the right thing.
We rolled into Calgary. You see the skyscrapers ahead as you approach the city and you do wonder to yourself why they feel the need to build upwards when they have so much space at their disposal. Perhaps it is something to do with city boundaries or perhaps it damages less land building upwards rather than outwards but it still makes a big blot on the horizon so it can't be simply that they don't want to damage the views of the landscape.
Calgary feels dated. It probably had massive investment in the late 80's when it hosted the Olympics and has just been ticking over ever since. It certainly doesn't appear as slick as Vancouver. The architecture is all 70's concrete and 80's mirror glass and it does make me wonder if hosting these big events is necessarily a good thing, in the long term, for these cities or if it becomes a thorn in their side and that they get, for want of a better word, typecast as a city that once did something great but that the rest of the world has moved on without them.
We seem to have moved down the food-chain again in terms of our accommodation. We started in a private room with air-con, a fridge and a sink. Next was a private room but without the mod-cons. Next was a dorm with stifling temperatures, shared with 2 other people. Now we have a dorm with stifling temperatures, rowdy tramps beneath our window and 4 other people in our room. As you walk out of the door of the hostel and turn to your right, there is a metal container bolted to a lamp-post near where the tramps gather, for needles. We're in the seedy part of town, alright.
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