We had such grand plans for lunch in Calgary. We had recommendations from Instagram, we had locals recommend stuff to us and even did some research in advance.
Leaving lunch as late as we did, however, threw all of those plans out of the window as we hot-footed it to what was one of the closest restaurants in the area – Charbar.
Thankfully though, Charbar turned out to be exactly what we needed, delicious food prepped pretty much in front of you.
Funnily enough, we retrospectively got a recommendation on Instagram for Charbar from a Calgary local so looks like we inadvertently chose well for lunch.
Lloyd went for the juiciest burger while I went for a steak with Chimichurri sauce – both of which were just.on.point! Hunger crisis averted! 😄
Leaving lunch, we headed over to the Calgary Tower for the best view over the city.
In retrospect, this view is probably best at night time with the whole city lit up (so bear that in mind when you do visit) though sunset is a pretty good time to visit too. Alas, it was a fairly cloudy day so the sun didn’t really get much of a chance to ‘set’ in beautifully dramatic fashion.
That being said though, getting to take the city from this vantage viewpoint is definitely worth it!
We even got to walk the glass floor which feels surreal and still had me instinctively grabbing for the railings as we walked across.
The plan had been to stick around till sunset but as I said earlier, that wasn’t really going to happen so we headed off to the next door Glenbow Museum which I’d been rather intrigued about (thanks to their surprising detailed exhibit on African culture and history).
The Glenbow Museum might seem unassuming from the outside but it’s a huge cavernous almost labyrinthine museum that is hard to put into one single niche. It’s got geology, African history, Canadian art, an impressive Japanese Samurai armour collection and even a whole Christian Dior collection.
It straddles so many interests and aspects of society that it’s very easy to find yourself roaming its hallways for hours on end fascinated by its treasures, regardless of what your interests are.
The Dior collection is arguably one of it’s more popular ones (no surprises there) and it’s an in-depth look at the iconic design house’s history and some of its iconic pieces.
Eventually, we decided to call it a day on sightseeing and head over to our hotel – the Le Germain hotel – which is literally right next door to the Glenbow Museum.
Dinner that evening was a lot more organised than lunch as we headed over to Gorilla Whale, one of those places everyone in town recommended we visit (and on Instagram) and people who heard we told we would be going for dinner than unanimously nodded in approval.
They weren’t wrong either! We kicked things off with a few cocktails – all of which went down rather too easily… (Mango Sake Bomb for me – Paper Crane for Lloyd)
^Yeah, that’s us sat in the same seat… Why the swap, I don’t even know. 😄
…before starting with the Shanghai crab (for me) and Chicken yakitori for Lloyd.
We also got the Pork belly okonomiyaki…
For mains, we both went for the same thing – the Chicken Chicken Bang Bang noodle soup, which was slurp-every-last-bit delicious!
By the time we were done with main, my grand plans for dessert flew right out of the window as we were so full by that point!
I had a quick glance at the Coconut butter tart on the menu before deciding it was probably best to call it a night rather than risk having to be pretty much rolled out of the restaurant from over-eating. 😄
The next day would see us leaving Calgary and heading for the mountains and countryside – arguably one of the most important reasons to visit Alberta!
But more on that in the next post… 😀
Finding Calgary’s Architectural Masterpieces – Studio Bell And The Central Library
Check Out The Very Best Of Great Britain!
