We had to pack ready for the evening flight to Los Angeles, which left at about 7:30 pm, so after breakfast it was back to the room for a lot of rearranging of stuff. Stuff is a very technical term and I won’t bore you with the definition. The hotel stored our luggage for us while we went out for the day.
First stop was the Calgary lookout, a similar looking structure to both the Seattle Space Needle, the Vancouver lookout and the Centrepoint tower in Sydney. When the tower was built, it was the tallest building in Calgary, but has since been topped by a few new towers.Calgary has many oil company head offices there, drawn by very attractive rents a number of years ago. Calgary’s main industry is oil. Canada is the buggest (oops, I think we’ve been talking to too many New Zealanders) oil exporter to the US. As you’d expect, the views from the tower were great. We walked down a level and had reasonable coffee in the revolving restaurant.
Calgary has free tram travel in the centre so we, just for a change, caught a tram to the end of the free section, missed the stop and ended up a good couple of kilometres further down the track. Easily fixed, caught the next tram back. We went to the Devonian Gardens, a beautiful covered oasis of gardens and pools on the top of one of the city buildings. The roof was clear and the blue sky stood out on one side and the dark grey on the other. It would be a very cozy place in winter with rain and snow outside. A grand piano was there for anyone to play.
From there we wove our way back to the hotel to wait for the shuttle to the airport. The Calgary airport, although an international airport, was efficient and easy to pass through. We went through US customs at the same time, this allowed our plane to land at the (one of) domestic terminals in Los Angeles. We had to wait for a late inbound flight to unload and move out of the way before our plane could come in. When we arrived in LA, we had to wait again for a parking spot. Rather big difference in weather between Calgary and LA. The traffic at LA airport was crazy. Given that it was just before 10pm and school holidays hadn’t started, it was bedlam. It took about half an hour, in the hire car shuttle bus, to get through the traffic to the hire car office. By now it was just before 11 pm. We’d let the hotel know that we’d be there between 10 and 11. The queue for the car check in was long, but we eventually got through and were told to go out the door, where someone would sort out the car. There was a Chev Comaro ready, but when we asked, they were able to arrange the Mustang if we waited another 15 mins. Had to have the Mustang. Then there were questions like: how does the roof come down, where is the headlight switch and how to stop and start the car. Obvious you with ordinary cars might say, use the key. This thing had a proximity key and a button to press to start the engine and the same button to stop. We were away to the hotel about 15 mins away. Very direct route, but a very careful drive in a car we’d never driven before and on the other side of the road. It was night and there was not a lot of traffic. All good. Checked in to the motel and dropped into bed.
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