Happy first day of Fall everyone! I’m not going to lie; fall time is one of my favourite seasons, and I don’t particularly rue the end of Summer. Well, I’ll miss the green trees and the flowers in bloom, but I will not miss the heat!
Besides there are plenty of reasons to love fall time. Here are a few which I just thought of now:
It is harvest time, which means there are tons of delicious vegetables and fruits to enjoy.
The changing colours of the Autumn leaves bring to life that quote, “Autumn is a second Spring, where every leaf is a flower”. This season is the most colourful season, I think.
We are no longer baking to death from the heat! (can you tell yet; I don’t like the heat.)
You can have a cozy fire burning in your fireplace. Not only does it keep you toasty warm, but it’s rather comforting too.
It is tights season, so I can pull out my mustard yellow, sheer polka dot and opaque black tights again!
Ok, I’ll join the bandwagon: it’s pumpkin pie season.
And, for me personally I love fall time because it’s my birthday 🙂
Do you enjoy Fall, or do you think of it only as a precursor to the dreaded Winter? What is your favourite thing about this season?
Ps. These photos were taken last month at my uncle’s farm. So, they aren’t technically “Fall” photos, as you can tell by the still-green leaves on the trees, but I think they suit the harvest theme well enough to share today anyways!
Last week I took a much needed holiday. Originally it was supposed to be a five day getaway, spanning from Saturday to Wednesday, but when I got back home, my new work computer hadn’t arrived yet (my other one had been sent back, since the hard drive was having problems), and so I was “forced” to take an extra four days off 😉
My friend Chantelle and I planned a while ago to go and visit one of our college friends in Calgary, as she is working there for the summer. Since Chantelle has been wanting to visit Calgary for a while, and I grew up in the area, we both thought a holiday in the city would be fun. I have already shared some pictures of Heritage Park, last week, and if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen some of these already, but today I am sharing some of the other pictures I took during my little trip to Calgary.
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Inglewood, Memorial Park and Lougheed House
I spent three days in Calgary, as the first two days were spent at a family gathering, so my first day in the city was Monday. We wanted to tour the Glenbow Museum, but when we found out that it was closed, we decided to go shopping in one of the older areas, a neighbourhood called “Inglewood”, instead. However, one thing we didn’t plan for was that almost everything is closed on Mondays! All of the art galleries and many of the shops we passed by were closed, which I thought was rather strange for a large city. Thus, instead of browsing, we mainly wandered around looking at old buildings, ate lunch in an English style pub, walked around Memorial Park, and then traversed the grounds of Lougheed house, because, (you guessed it) the house was closed! Even though we did get caught in the rain towards the end of the day, it was still a great time spent exploring and spending time together. And a note to the future- don’t go on a trip to Calgary on a Monday!
The grounds at Lougheed House, below.
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Heritage Park
The second day was spent at Heritage Park, and though I did already share some pictures of the historical settlement last week, this week I am sharing some photos of the village. We had perfect weather for our day at Heritage Park; sunny, but not too hot and although at first we had thought we would spend only half the day there, we ended up spending seven hours at the park, and still not seeing everything! My favourite parts of the day were watching the street theatre my friend was in, buying a twenty-five cent newspaper which was printed on a 150 year old printing press, and visiting the Famous Five centre in the replica of Nellie McClung’s house. It was great to see the rooms where they discussed women’s right to be considered “persons”, especially since I could see the real Nellie McClung house from the apartment I was staying in. The attention to detail at Heritage Park is fascinating, and as you walk through it, you don’t feel as though you are in a park, since all of the buildings are ones that were moved there, or are authentic reproductions of historical places.
Nellie McClung’s house above, and, below, a photo of her and Emmaline Pankhurst.
The village main “street”, strawberry ice cream from the ice cream parlour, and the ranch house (below).
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The Cityscape
The view from the balcony.
The third day, Wednesday, was, sadly, the day that Chantelle and I had to leave. After one last look at the view off of our friends apartment balcony, we said goodbye, and then headed downtown (which was only a few blocks away). Chantelle and I wandered around downtown for an hour and a half, before we left the city, because we wanted to be able to see the skyscrapers, and “experience city life”. I loved seeing the contrast of the old and the new. All of the historical sandstone buildings with a backdrop of metal and glass behind, is such an interesting sight. We also loved walking through the “+15” skywalk (which connects many of the buildings in the downtown core) and walking past, and almost going into, a building that was being evacuated! Whoops! (we were wondering why all of those people were milling around!)
Above, just a random pretty house I saw, and below, the boarding house across the street, which was overshadowed by many tall apartment buildings.
Then, after our feet were almost worn off, we left the city and headed for home. We stopped for lunch in Lacombe on the way home, because Chantelle has always wanted to see that town, and then the holiday was over!
It was a very short trip to Calgary, but it was so wonderful to just get away for a while. I don’t really like traveling, but because the nature of my day job is that I am almost always “on call”, it was actually really wonderful to literally walk away from my computer and leave the phone behind, and focus on other things for a while. And, because I wasn’t at home, I was able to take an actual break, without work staring me in the face!
Have you ever taken a very quick roadtrip somewhere? Do you like to travel, or are you a homebody? Have you ever visited Calgary?
On this most momentous Canadian holiday, I am marking the day by posting. . . nothing to do with Canada. Whoops! Oh well, I’ll be celebrating the day in some patriotic way I suppose (though I will NOT be dressed in Red and White- as the colour red makes me look ill!) Last week I realized that exactly one year ago, I was in England on summer holidays with my family. And, I actually spent Canada Day last year in Stratford-Upon-Avon, doing nothing patriotic either. As much as I love Canada, I guess I am just not a patriotic celebration kind of person.
Anyways, time does really seem to fly by, as it really doesn’t seem like a year ago, and yet the calendar says so . . . Sigh, at least I have these pictures to remember the trip by.
I was looking through all the pictures again, and I thought- why not share some of them here on the blog? I didn’t before, because I wasn’t blogging last year! I have these and tons of other photographs that I’ve never shared or done anything with, so I’ve decided that I’m going to start a little column here called “photographic memory” where I’ll periodically share old photographs of mine. (get it. . . photographic memory? hahaha. . . ) They might not necessarily be related to anything, but it’ll be nice to do something with them 🙂
So today, in anniversary of that trip one year ago- I present to you “The Doors of England”. Obviously this is not an exhaustive directory, it’s more like “The Doors of Stow-on-the-Wold”, the village where we stayed for 10 days in a little cottage. It was a lovely area, in the Cotswold region of England, and the loveliest thing about it is that because it is an “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty” (so classified by the British government) it attracts a lot of tourists, and so everything in the area is quite historic and photogenic 🙂 The majority of the buildings are made of “Cotswold limestone” and even the new construction is built to suit the same style. Pretty much everywhere you look there is another beautiful photo opportunity! As a lover of history, I absolutely adored Stow, and the whole Cheltenham area, and I would definitely recommend it to everyone. Coming from western Canada, where we are lucky to find a building that is 100 years old and not fallen to the ground, it was so fantastic to see all of these ancient buildings that are still in use, and still being lived in. The front doors were such a fabulous part of the town as each one was so different and unique.
Can you imagine walking out your front door each day if it looked like these?
I loved the one above, which was the front door to the cottage across the road from where we stayed. It reminded me of a face, and it was so short that the man who lived there had to stoop to walk through it! I also love the ones covered in vines, but really I couldn’t choose . . .
