28 September – 1 October – the last days
This article is part of the series “2026-09: Canada”.
It was more than three weeks ago that our holiday in Canada began. We still have some days left, but we are on the home stretch. It has been a spectacular holiday with many more impressions than I had hoped for, and if I had to say what the best part was, I couldn’t give a single answer. Besides, I got to share it all with my wife Annika.
28 September
After the wonderful previous day, when we drove the Icefields Parkway we have another day at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, a ski resort 500 metres above the town of Golden, My plans for the day; a swim in a lake and an afternoon nap. But first: breakfast.
We take the car to the Cedar Lake, a nice bathing lake nearby. First we hike to Astro Lake through autumnal forests. The way back is a bit longer than expected, and a chance to cool down in Cedar Lake, which has its own bathing jetty is mostly welcome. I spend some time swimming in the cold water, and back at the apartment I am shivering. Luckily, our apartment has a bathtub, which gives me my second bath of the day.
29 September
Oh, this is an early morning. For three weeks we have been spreading out all our belongings in our rental car, now everything is properly packed again, because today we have to return the car. Not in Golden, but in Calgary – 300 km away – by 10 o’clock. When we start, it is pitch black and it is raining. It takes more than an hour until I can distinguish the mountains against the cloudy sky.
Returning the car works like a charm. There is a dedicated lane off the road and the friendly staff wave us into a parking bay. We take our belongings, return the key, and that’s it. We take the number 500 bus into town and another one to our Airbnb apartment, leave our luggage and look for a place where we can return our deposit bottles that we collected over the past few weeks. They are not accepted in the supermarkets but in special bottle depots.
30 September
Today we want to discover Calgary. We take a bus to the centre and cross the Bow River, the very same river we saw in the Rockies three days ago. We return to the centre on the Peace Bridge and take a stroll through the Prince’s Island Park, located on a river isle. The combination of the skyscraper-dominated cityscape, the river and the autumnal trees has its appeal.
In town we drift through the streets, which are laid out in a grid with streets (St) and avenues (Ave). The number of skyscrapers is stunning. There are many with apartments, but it looks like the big ones with the mirrored façades seem to be mainly office buildings.
But of course there are other houses as well, sometimes contrasting with their modern siblings, sometimes just finding a small patch, where they stand like a dandelion on an asphalt road.
We enjoy our last dinner in the Taste of Yemen, where we get an incredible meal at more than reasonable prices. If I lived in Calgary, I would be a regular visitor there.
1 October
Time to fly home. After having the last breakfast, packing our belongings, taking the bus to the airport, leaving the baggage, waiting for the flight and then Annika and I leave Calgary, sitting side by side in the very last row of the aeroplane. I have set my clock forward eight hours to get back to Central European Summer Time again and try to sleep as much as possible. It is more than a series of naps. When I wake up for the umpteenth time, we are above the coast of Labrador. It is night and I cannot see any landscape, but I do see a faint green arc in the north. The first Northern Lights of the season.
