New Year’s in Calgary

I am sorrrrrry to say that a trip to Canada just never worked out until now. I had been stalking fares to Vancouver (YVR) for months but they never fell under $400. WestJet had roundtrip tickets from Phoenix (PHX) to Calgary (YYC) for $135 USD for New Year’s Eve. I jumped on it. I paid around $50 per seat to upgrade to WestJet’s Plus seating, think of it as Canadian first class on their 737.

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In WestJet Plus you get a meal, no person in the middle seat next to you, a checked bag,  more legroom and a cocktail. I chose the cheese plate. I plan on creating a full breakdown of if Plus is worth it on WestJet soon.

We landed around 1 a.m. and proceeded to immigration. This is where things got a little rough. The agent asked why we were visiting Calgary and was not satisfied by our vacation reply. He told us that people don’t come to Calgary for vacation in the winter from the US. We were then escorted to another office.

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In level 2 immigration screening, we were asked if we were running from the law in the US, if we were drug dealers, why we are here if we don’t ski, if we have a hotel confirmation, why we were in Paris in October, if we had ever been to Africa, why we travel so much, if we were renting a car, if we were going to Banff, and what we were really going to do in Canada. It was a very unpleasant welcome. It really really pissed us off but we were nice and friendly to the officer. They let us enter Canada.

Things only got better after that. We had the most friendly cab driver. Our hotel, Le Germain Calgary, was awesome. Canada is beautiful.

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The best meal of the trip was at blink location on Stephen avenue in downtown Calgary. With the Canadian / US dollar exchange rate benefiting Americans, we ate like kings. All and all are great trip. We brought back a pound of white maple fudge, which our dog ate and immediately puked up.

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