A Calgary Park in a Mall

 Calgary, AB

Devonian Gardens

Today we walked to the CORE Shopping Centre (a mall) to visit The Devonian Gardens.  The gardens are actually in the mall on the top floor.  There are trees and 50 varieties of plants, mostly of the house plant variety, as well as a Koi Pond and a playground for the kids. It was pretty cool but I am sure it would be really cool er warm in the dead of winter.  The mall it is in is huge and connected by enclosed walkways that connect many of the buildings downtown so you can walk around without going outside.

Our walk to the downtown area took us down these steps that people use to exercise.

And we got to walk over two footbridges.

The Bow River passes right by Calgary on the east side.

Public art that reminded me of the Rockin' Rollercoaster queue.

These benches also hide a flood protection wall.  They can close this gate when the water in the river is expected to be high.

You can see part of the walkway system to the left and right of this building.

Light rail goes right by the entrance to the walkway near the mall.  There are a few stops that are fare free and subsidized by TD Ameritrade.  We will go back and ride at some point.

You have to have a ticket if you travel outside the small fare free zone.

We walked up some stairs and entered the walkway.

This is a map of all of the connected walkways. It's the most extensive pedestrian skywalk in the world with 10 miles of walkway through 130 buildings connected by 86 bridges.

Majestic Masks by Tom Ward.  He made these masks out of pine and spruce burls between the 1960s up until his death in 1984.

They are really cool.

A shop at the mall caught my attention.  If you are a pinball nerd you understand why it caught my eye.

There is a nice pedestrian mall outside as well.

Art in the outside pedestrian mall.

We saw Star Trek boots for sale.

The return portion of our walk took us through a bit of Chinatown.

After our 5ish mile walk we rewarded ourselves with some beer from a brewery about a half a block away from us.

The beers were just okay and Francis got a lot of attention, some of it was a little unwanted.

That's it for today.  If you missed, Deathsave Pinball Tournament, check it out.  I played in a pinball tournament here in Calgary.