Calgary

Calgary is a prairie city about 1,000km from the nearest ocean, so beaches are not part of a stay here. In summer locals swim in Sikome Lake in Fish Creek Park and at Chestermere Lake just east of the city, and floating the Bow River on a raft or inner tube is a popular warm-day pastime. The famous turquoise lakes in the Rockies are glacier-fed and stay bitingly cold even in August, so they are for looking at and paddling on, not swimming.

Beef is what Calgary does best. Alberta's ranching country supplies steakhouses ranging from old-school dining rooms to modern grills, and the city lays claim to inventing ginger beef, a crisp, sticky Chinese-Canadian dish you can still order in Chinatown. Beyond that the scene is broad but rarely distinctive. You will find good Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian and Lebanese cooking in the suburbs, a solid craft-beer scene in the brewery district around Manchester and Ramsay, and pleasant brunch spots along 17th Avenue, Kensington and Inglewood.

There is not much street food and no great market tradition, although the farmers' markets bring together prairie produce, bison and Saskatoon berry pies. Good food, rarely the reason anyone comes.

Calgary is a young city, founded as a police fort in 1875, and its sights match that. The Glenbow is the main museum of western Canadian art and history. Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre, has a collection of instruments and the archives of Canadian music. Heritage Park, a large living-history village on the Glenmore Reservoir, re-creates prairie settlement with steam trains and costumed staff. Stephen Avenue still has a stretch of sandstone buildings from the 1880s and 1890s, and Fort Calgary marks the place where the city began.

The Calgary Tower and the glass towers downtown give the skyline its shape, but a visitor sees all of this in two days. The region's best heritage, its dinosaur fossils and Indigenous sites, lies outside the city.

Most nights out happen on 17th Avenue SW, a long strip of pubs, cocktail bars and patios, and along Stephen Avenue and the East Village downtown. There are a few clubs, and Kensington and Inglewood have smaller neighbourhood bars. Calgary's own contribution is the country bar: big rooms with line dancing, a mechanical bull and live country cover bands.

For most of the year the city goes out at weekends and is quiet midweek. The exception is the Calgary Stampede each July, when tents and pop-up saloons fill the city, and white hats and cowboy boots stay out well past midnight for ten days straight.

This is the main reason to base yourself in Calgary. The front ranges of the Rockies rise on the western horizon, and Kananaskis Country is about an hour away, with high trails, larches that turn gold in September, and fewer crowds than the national parks. Banff National Park starts about ninety minutes out, with ridge hikes, Johnston Canyon, canoeing on glacial lakes, elk and bighorn sheep beside the road, and the chance of a bear. In winter there is skiing at Sunshine, Lake Louise and Nakiska, and Nordic trails in Canmore.

The city has its own outdoors as well. A long pathway network follows the Bow and Elbow rivers for cycling and running, Fish Creek is one of the largest urban parks in the country, and Nose Hill is open grassland with views over the mountains. A car makes all of this far easier.

Banff, about ninety minutes west, is the classic outing. It is a resort town with a grand railway hotel, the Whyte Museum and the Cave and Basin site where the national park began. Canmore, closer in, is a smaller mountain town with a relaxed main street. To the north-east, Drumheller lies in a badlands valley and holds the Royal Tyrrell Museum, one of the world's great collections of dinosaur fossils, about an hour and a half away by car.

To the south, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO site where Blackfoot people hunted bison for thousands of years, is about two hours away. Cochrane, Okotoks and the Bar U Ranch add some ranching history. Nearly all of these need a car or a tour.

Calgary is an easy, safe city for children, with a lot built for them. The Calgary Zoo on St George's Island is large, with a prehistoric park of life-size dinosaurs. TELUS Spark is a hands-on science centre, and Heritage Park lets children ride a steam train and a paddlewheeler through a pioneer village. Calaway Park, on the western edge, is a modest amusement park. At Canada Olympic Park, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics, you will find a mountain coaster and zip lines in summer and beginner ski slopes in winter.

The Stampede midway and rodeo are a highlight for many families in July. Distances are long and winters are cold, so a car helps, and the dinosaur museum at Drumheller is a favourite outing for older children.

Downtown is compact and on a grid. The Plus 15, a network of enclosed skywalks between buildings, lets you cross much of it without going outside on cold days. Two CTrain light-rail lines run from the centre to the suburbs, reaching the zoo, Stampede Park and the university, and the riverside pathways make cycling between central neighbourhoods such as Kensington, Inglewood and the Beltline pleasant.

Beyond the core the city sprawls, buses are slow, and the main draws, Banff, Kananaskis and Drumheller, are realistically reached only by car, shuttle or tour. Most visitors hire a car at the airport.

Shopping here is mostly North American malls. CORE downtown and Chinook Centre to the south carry the major chains and a few upmarket labels. Stephen Avenue is the pedestrian spine, and Kensington, Inglewood and 17th Avenue have independent boutiques, record shops and antique dealers.

The distinctive purchase is western wear: hand-made cowboy boots, felt hats, belt buckles and saddlery, sold in long-established outfitters that see their busiest weeks before the Stampede. Indigenous art and crafts are also worth seeking out. There is little luxury beyond what the malls hold, and it is not a city people travel to for shopping.

Calgary is a middling-to-expensive place to visit. Outside Stampede week, when rooms are scarce and dear, hotels cost less than in Canada's coastal cities. Eating out is not cheap once tax and the customary tip are added, though food courts and suburban family restaurants keep a budget manageable. The real costs come from the mountains: a hire car, national park entry, hotels in Banff, lift passes and guided tours all add up quickly.

The Werklund Centre downtown is the hub. It holds the Jack Singer Concert Hall, home of the Calgary Philharmonic, and several theatres used by Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects. Calgary Opera stages a short season at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, and Studio Bell puts on concerts in its performance hall. You can count on the programme, but it is a regional scene, not a reason to travel.

The city's character comes through best in music away from the concert hall: country and roots bands in bars, the Calgary Folk Music Festival on Prince's Island in July, and the Stampede's evening grandstand show with chuckwagon races and fireworks.

The city itself has no bathing tradition. Wellness means hotel spas, day spas and yoga studios, and its practical, working pace is calm without being restorative. The best places to unwind are in the mountains. Kananaskis has a large Nordic spa with outdoor hot pools and saunas facing the peaks, about an hour's drive away, and Banff's Upper Hot Springs, a historic mineral pool on Sulphur Mountain, is about ninety minutes away. A quiet weekend in Canmore or Banff does more for rest than staying in town.