Jilted Jaunts Series - Table of Contents
| Entry | Notable Places/Events | Start of Day | End of Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 0 - May 22-24 2025 | Introduction, Planning | - | - |
| Day 1 - May 25 2025 | Edmonton > Calgary > Canmore | Edmonton | Canmore |
| Day 2 - May 26 2025 | Banff, Tunnel Mountain | Canmore | Canmore |
| Day 3 - May 27 2025 | Three Sisters Pathway, Canmore, Lake Minnewanka stargazing | Canmore | Canmore |
| Day 4 - May 28 2025 | Canmore > Calgary | Canmore | Calgary |
| Day 5 - May 29 2025 | Calgary > Vancouver, Crystal Mall, Aberdeen Square, Aberdeen Centre | Calgary | Vancouver |
| Day 6 - May 30 2025 | Parker Place, Main Street, Chinatown, Gastown, Shipyards Night Market | Vancouver | Vancouver |
| Day 7 - May 31 2025 | Richmond Public Market, Vancouver Aquarium, Richmond Night Market | Vancouver | Vancouver Airport |
| Day 8 - May 31 2025 | Vancouver > Calgary > Edmonton, Vancouver Airport, Lilac Festival | Vancouver Airport | Edmonton |
Sunday, May 25 2025 (Day 1)
Edmonton
You know, I really don’t want an Edmonton segment of my first travel day, as this means that something notable happened before we even left the city. I don’t want anything notable to happen this early on!
But what happened was that I was a little over 10 minutes early to the Southgate bus terminal that the Flixbus that I had bought a ticket on was going to be departing leave from. I stood at the Park and Ride area like every other time I’ve taken this bus, and mentally ran through a list of things that I had probably forgotten to do for the trip.
A lady came up to me 10 minutes before the bus was going to leave and inquired if I was waiting for the bus to Calgary as well. Yep, I said, though it was strange that no one else was here. She also agreed that it was probably here and that the ticket didn’t give any more specific instructions on where exactly at the terminal we were supposed to meet. I did point out that there was a Flixbus waiting on the opposite side of the street though, the street that was facing south (toward Calgary) — but surely that wasn’t our bus, right?
I got nervous though and looked at my phone — there were 8 minutes left. I said that I was going to cross the transit station’s long overhead bridge to go check. I said that I would come back and alert her if it was the right bus. The lady said that she had been driven there by her daughter in a car and was going to go back there and wait and see if the bus arrived on this side, and she would make sure the bus waited for me if it did. I said ok and I hurried up and over.
With five minutes left, I reached the other side of the road and asked the bus driver there if this was the Calgary bus. It was! Oops. I told him that I had to run back and let the lady know, he warned that the bus would leave on the dot if I were not back here yet. I still had my luggage (rucksack and shoulder bag) with me, and I really should have left it there, but instead I carried both and ran all the back, only to find that the lady and her car were no longer there anyway. Argh.
I ran back and made it to the bus right on the minute of its departure. The lady was standing on the steps of the bus’s front door looking out for me and she thanked me for going back to get her but at some point they had figured it out as well and thus had driven over too while I was running back. She was “holding the bus” just in case but the driver was also waiting around anyway as far as I could tell and probably wouldn’t have left, so all’s well that ended well in the end. Except that I was exhausted from all the running back and forth and was sweating buckets for about 20 minutes before I finally cooled off when the driver turned on the bus air-conditioning. My semi-hiking/walking trip had barely started and I was already out of energy!
Calgary
I actually slept a couple of times on and off on the three and a half hour ride to Calgary. This was nice, and was probably aided by the fact that there was no passenger sitting adjacent to me. And the fact that I had not slept the night before, had exerted myself running back and forth over the overhead bridge with luggage, had nice air-conditioning blowing in my face (though eventually it became too cold) etc. Due to this I actually had a dream and kept my hapless dream streak alive one more day. Cool.
Once I was in Calgary, I wanted to use the washroom and was hoping to find a mall with a public one. I went north and found a few cool-looking malls in their Chinatown area, which by the way puts Edmonton’s Chinatown to abject shame. One of these nice malls was called the Dragon City Mall:
The inside of this mall was really nice, I loved the aesthetic and it kinda reminded me of Singapore’s indie malls.
But the washrooms there were not for outsiders, so I left. I went into another two malls in Chinatown and those were all locked too. Thankfully I was doing this well in advance of actually needing to go, so I was just mildly annoyed. The next mall I went into also had locked washrooms, but this time one of the Chinese shopowners was headed to the washroom with her kid as well at the same time that I was there staring at the lock, so she kindly let me in.
After relieving myself, I went to eat at a restaurant that was attached to that mall of unknown name. The restaurant was called Delicious Country Restaurant.
And I picked this restaurant because of one item on their menu — “Hokkien Mee” listed under “Fried Noodles” (With egg, sprouts…). This is my favourite dish. Or is supposed to be. Instead, this is what they gave me.
What part of that is fried? Where are the eggs and sprouts? That was such a disappointing meal!
After filling myself up with mediocrity, I headed east toward a certain market that I had heard was going on. Apparently there was something called the Servus Calgary Marathon (local) going on, and serendipitously a good part of my 35 minute walk from the restaurant to my target place ran along the same route as the marathon, so I got to walk along the outside and watch people run, walk, and crawl past me and get cheered on by onlookers and organizers.
Very nice. But soon I broke away from them and veered off into a neighbourhood called Inglewood, in case it wasn’t obvious enough from this picture.
I was headed here to the Asian Creatives YYC Showcase & Market (archive), which was apparantly an event that was being held on the last day of a larger event called the InglewooDIY Festival (archive) and also possibly part of Asian Heritage Month. It was located inside Inglewood, an artsy district, and I really liked walking through here and looking at cool architecture, little shops and cafes, and various pieces of art strewn around. I like this area. I’m not sure Edmonton has anything close to this neighbourhood either, though we have a fairly large art movement too.
I actually ran into another open craft market along the way too, but it wasn’t my destination, so I didn’t stop here. Did take pictures though.
This was my destination:
I didn’t take a picture of the inside, but for how large and long the introduction website for the event was, the event itself was really small, with a movie area showing a loop of short movies that no one was really watching, and about two dozen vendors or so. There was some really cool stuff in there though, like these:
I want. They’re $50 a pop though, but still.
I also met and chatted up two friendly artists, and one thing led to another and suddenly they were both fawning over and drawing Tigey:
This is a photo of those two artistic renditions that I took at my hotel room later on in the day:
The left one was from Rozzie (@calgarychalkartist) and the right one from Jessica (@eggtarthearts). Thanks for the great drawings! Rozzie was charging $35 for pet pictures but gave me a discount for the Tigey pictures because he was easier to draw. I was apparently my namesake’s first customer of the day and she didn’t have a formal price laid out and was trying to tell me that I didn’t even have to pay if I didn’t like her art or anything but neither I nor Rozzie were having any of that and in the end I paid her $15, the same discount that I had been given for the other picture. And I should really find more artists to do renditions of Tigey. That would be a great collection to assemble.
After that, I walked back to the downtown Flixbus terminal area again, which was another 35 or so minutes away on foot. The main thing of note that happened was that I tried looking for another washroom again, and ended up at a place called Arts Commons, an arts centre that was fairly busy. But again the washroom was locked to patrons only. However, as I stared at the sign for the second time that day, another saviour came up behind me for the second time that day. The woman who waved me down said that she had just gotten the password to the digital locks on the washroom and was going to use them, so I tagged along.
Apparently the only way I can use washrooms in downtown Calgary is ghosting along behind someone about to use one. There were toilets on the Flixbus buses too though, I just really didn’t want to use them.
And talking about Flixbus, one hour and change (and another quick power nap) later and we were in Canmore!
Canmore
I had mapped out where the bus was going to let us down, and where my hotel was, long before I took my first footstep on this jilted jaunt, so I was going to leave behind the group of people who were milling around the bus disembarkment point looking at their maps and stuff once we arrived in Canmore. However, before I could leave, I noticed a group of 3 people doing something very interesting. They were taking a picture of their plushie on a rock near the arrival location.
So I took Tigey out and put him down beside the dog plushie, whose name was apparently Kingo:
I feel like Tigey might be the star of this journey after all, not me.
I then left everyone behind and headed off to my hotel. The place I was staying at was called Mountain View Inn, and I had booked a slightly pricier (but still very reasonable) corner room with a great triple corner window setup for my first two nights.
One of the windows even overlooked some train tracks! A train rumbled by now and then — one small disadvantage to other people is that the train rumbles by even at night, but I do like train noises a lot so it would never have been a minus point for me, and it wasn’t terribly loud anyway.
The room had one major minus point and two minor minus points though. The major one was that slippers were not provided, which I expect from all hotel and inn type rooms, and the first of the two minor points was that it did not provide toothpaste (and maybe a toothbrush), even though it did provide shampoo, body wash, bars of soap, etc. The second one was that it did not have a water flask, only a coffee pot that makes coffee-flavoured water due to the previously used filter. However, this was mitigated by the fact that there was a water kettle down in the lobby area that made perfectly great water, and no one else seemed to be using it, so I took advantage of it to boil a couple flasks of water, let them cool off while I went out or hung out in my room, and then refilled my bottles with them.
To mitigate the lack of slippers, the clerk suggested some nearby convenience stores, and the convenience store clerk recommended nearby sporting goods stores, but I wasn’t going to spwnt $40 on some flip-flops. Instead I walked over to the Canadian Tire store in town and picked up a much cheaper $13 pair there. I’ll be able to use that one at home too I suppose.
The other notable outdoor event on the day was when I went down to the main street of Canmore to source dinner. I knew there were online webcams (local) in the area, and just like I did that one time when I was in Kabukicho in Tokyo, I had someone in my main Discord server (thanks Kynji!) take a screenshot as I waved Tigey at the webcam.
I had my dinner in a nearby second floor restaurant called Murrieta’s Mountain Bar & Grill. They gave me a window seat so I could stare at evening-lit mountains and the town square as I ate, and I ordered a prosciutto pizza and a “mango berry” mocktail with mango, blackberry, lime, and soda. This was the first time I had proper pizza I think, and definitely the first time I had a mocktail as well. Didn’t really like the mocktail, since I don’t usually drink fizzy drinks, but the pizza was very nice, both with and without the chili flakes and oil that they provided too.
It did cost like $40 after the tip, mostly due to the mocktail which elevated the cost around $10, but eh, the pizza was very nice, the view was very nice, the servers were nice, and the experience was neat.
I am going to end off this section and this blog post with a compilation of scenery — mostly mountain — pictures from the day, but before I do that, something else happened in the evening once I was back at my hotel room that really threw me off and wasted a bunch of my time too. The room that I had booked in Vancouver via Vrbo cancelled on me 22 hours after my booking had been “confirmed”, saying that he was double booked for the property and basically, to paraphrase, too bad so sad.
This booking was for May 29-31, so it was still four days ago, but this pissed me off since Vancouver was so difficult to find good lodgings for. After fighting with their useless chatbot for some time, I finally managed to find the Vrbo customer support number and called them, and I eventually got escalated to a manager, who tried his best to help me find some suitable alternatives since I said that I was had already commenced my vacation in the ensuing twenty two hours after I had booked the lodging that eventually got cancelled.
The funny thing is, once we had decided on a replacement from the (lousy) list that he provided me, I booked it and it got cancelled again anyway within the hour because THAT lodging owner had also become doublebooked as he had already rented the place out on Airbnb and had forgotten that he was still on Vrbo too. And that he was considering just delisting himself on Vrbo. At least he cancelled quickly, and he was also sympathetic and said I could crash on his couch as a last resort if need be. And he also eventually suggested another nearby lodging on Airbnb, without me asking him to or anything like that, he was just willing to go the extra mile to try to help me find a cheap place. Super nice guy, starkly different from the previous guy who cancelled after being silent for 22 hours and just claimed he was overbooked and that was it.
Anyway I tried to book this new suggested Airbnb location, although the lady that owns that listing had not yet replied as of writing, since it was done late at night. Hopefully I get it because this would actually save me about $100 over my previous two Vrbo bookings. I also told the Vrbo agent (via email, as he had said to reply to the email he had sent me if I ran into any more trouble) that unless Vrbo compensated me with a free two night stay in a hotel somewhere that wouldn’t get compensated, I was done with them and their “instant booking” as they cannot be trusted. And that I didn’t expect them to actually do such a thing, but that that would be the level of goodwill I would need from Vrbo at this point to ever consider giving them my business again.
So consider this a reverse recommendation — avoid Vrbo/Expedia at all costs for booking personal lodging. Lodging owners seem to consider them a lower tier version of Airbnb and you will suffer a constant risk of having your bookings cancelled by lodging owners that have “forgotten” about their listing. I’m guessing actual hotels on that site work just fine though, but never the Airbnb-style people houses part of it. Just go to Airbnb instead.
Anyway, enough negativity. My Pikmin Bloom/walking counter counted 24,017 steps taken today, and I used a bit of insect repellent and sunscreen by myself for the first time. I think I still got slightly sunburned from the Calgary walk as I didn’t use sunscreen until I came to Canmore though. Anyway, although my feet hurt now, I present some lovely scenery pictures from the Canmore portion of my walking expedition to round off this blog post!
