Alberta tourist attractions, sightseeing tours

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Banff - Calgary - Jasper - Lake Louise

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TOURIST GUIDE TO SIGHTS, TOUR ACTIVITIES, ATTRACTIONS, TRAVEL AND EXPLORATION - ALBERTA .

Calgary to Jasper to Lake Louise and Banff Tour. This winter tour takes you from Jasper to Lake Louise along the famed Icefields Parkway. This spectacular drive through glacier country will be highlighted by massive snow-covered mountain ranges. At Lake Louise, a 30 minute stop allows time to enjoy the views of the Victoria Glacier. (For added convenience, those concluding their tour in Lake Louise will be transferred to their hotel.) From Lake Louise, continue your journey to Banff, passing Castle Mountain and the Vermillion Lakes. Upon arrival in Banff, you will be transferred to your hotel.

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Information for the visitor to Alberta, Canada

Calgary, a likeable and booming place, whose downtown skyscrapers soared almost overnight on the back of an oil bonanza in the 1970s, Calgary's 's tight high-rise core is good for wandering, and contains the prestigious Glenbow Museum. The wooden houses of the far-flung suburbs, meanwhile, recall the city's pioneering frontier origins, which are further celebrated in the annual Calgary Stampede, a hugely popular cowboy carnival in which the whole town - and hordes of tourists - revel in a boots-and-stetson image that's still very much a way of life in the surrounding cattle country. Year-round you can dip into the city's lesser museums and historic sites, or take time out in its scattering of attractive city parks.

The main Visitor Information Services , part of the Calgary Convention and Visitors Bureau, is on the main floor of the Calgary Tower Centre in the Calgary Tower, 139 Tower Centre, 101-9th Ave SW (mid-May to mid-Sept daily 8am-8pm; mid-Sept to mid-May Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-5pm; tel 263-8510 in Calgary, tel 1-800/661-8888 elsewhere in North America; recorded information tel 262-2766). It doles out huge amounts of information and provides a free accommodation-finding service. You can also access Travel Alberta on the Internet ( www.travelalberta.com ). Minor offices operate at the airport (Arrivals level), the Canada Olympic Park and on the westbound side of the Trans-Canada Highway between 58th and 62nd Street NE. The informative monthly Where Calgary is free from shops, hotels and the Visitors Bureau.

For all its rapid expansion, Calgary is a well-planned and straightforward city engineered around an inevitable grid . The metropolitan area is divided into quadrants (NW, NE, SE and SW) with the Bow River separating north from south, Centre Street-Macleod Trail east from west. Downtown - and virtually everything there is to see and do - is in a small area in or close to the SW quadrant. Streets run north-south, avenues east-west, with numbers increasing as you move out from the centre. As with Edmonton, the last digits of the first number refer to the house number - thus 237-8th Ave SE is on 2nd Street at no. 37, close to the intersection with 8th Avenue. It's easy to overlook the quadrant, so check addresses carefully.

An orgy of all things cowboy and cowgirl, the annual Calgary Stampede brings around a quarter of a million spectators and participants to the city for ten days during the middle two weeks of July. This is far more than a carefully engineered gift to Calgary's tourist industry, however, for the event is one of the world's biggest rodeos and comes close to living up to its billing as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth". During "The Week", as it's known by all and sundry, the city loses its collective head; just about everyone turns out in white stetsons, bolo ties, blue jeans and hand-tooled boots, addressing one another in a bastardized cowboy C&W slang.

But for all its heavily worked visitor appeal, the competition end of things is taken very seriously. Most of the cowboys are for real, as are the injuries - the rodeo is said to be North America's roughest - and the combined prize money is a very serious $500,000. Even the first show in 1912, masterminded by entrepreneur Guy Weadick, put up $100,000 (raised from four Calgary businessmen) and attracted 60,000 people to the opening parade, a line-up that included 2000 aboriginal people in full ceremonial rig and Pancho Villa's bandits in a show erroneously billed as a swan song for the cowboy of the American West ("The Last and Best Great West Frontier Days"). Around 40,000 daily attended the rodeo events (today's figure is 100,000), not bad considering Calgary's population at the time was only 65,000.

Nowadays the events kick off on Thursday evening at Stampede Park with a show previewing the next ten-days' events. Next day there's the traditional parade , timed to begin at 9am, though most spectators are in place along the parade route (which is west along 6th Ave from 2nd St SE, south on 10th St SW and east along 9th Ave) by 6am. The march takes two hours, and involves around 150 entries, 4000 participants and some 700 horses. For the rest of the Stampede the Olympic Plaza in downtown (known as Rope Square for the duration) offers free pancake breakfasts daily (8.30-11.30am) and entertainment every morning. Typical events include bands, mock gunfights, square dances, native dancing and country bands. Square dancing also fills parts of Stephen Avenue Mall at 10am every morning. Nightlife is a world unto itself, with Stampede locations giving way to music, dancing and mega-cabarets, which involve casts of literally thousands. There's also lots of drinking, gambling, fireworks and general partying into the small hours. Barbecues are the norm, and even breakfast is roped into the free-for-all - outdoor bacon, pancake and flapjack feasts being the traditional way to start the day. "White hatter stew" and baked beans are other inevitable staples.

Stampede's real action, though - the rodeo and allied events - takes place in Stampede Park , southeast of downtown and best reached by C-Train (every 10min) to Victoria Park-Stampede Station. This vast open area contains an amusement park, concert and show venues, bars and restaurants and a huge range of stalls and shows that take the best part of a day to see. Entrance is $8, which allows you to see all the entertainments except the rodeo and chuck-wagon races. Things to see include the aboriginal village at the far end of the park, where members of the Five Nations peoples (Blackfoot, Blood, Sarcee, Stoney and Piegan) set up a tepee village (tours available); the John Deere Show Ring, scene of the World Blacksmith Competition; the Centennial Fair, which hosts events for children; the Agricultural Building, home to displays of cattle and other livestock; the outdoor Coca-Cola Stage, used for late-night Country shows; and the Nashville North, an indoor Country venue with bar and dancing until 2am.

If you want to see the daily rodeo competition - bronco riding, bull riding, native-buffalo riding, branding, calf-roping, steer-wrestling, cow-tackling, wild-cow milking and the rest - you need another ticket ($8 on the day), though unless you've bought these in advance , it's hardly worth it: you'll probably be in poor seats miles from the action and hardly see a thing. Rodeo heats are held each afternoon from 1.30pm for the first eight days, culminating in winner-takes-all finals on Saturday and Sunday (prize money for the top honcho is $50,000). If you want to watch the other big event, the ludicrously dangerous but hugely exciting chuck-wagon races (the "World Championship") you need yet another ticket ($8) on the day, though again you need to buy these in advance to secure anything approaching decent seats. The nine contests are held once-nightly at 8pm, the four top drivers going through to the last-night final, where another $50,000 awaits the winner.

It's worth planning ahead if you're coming to Calgary for Stampede. Accommodation is greatly stretched - be certain to book ahead - and prices for most things are hiked for the duration. Tickets for the rodeo and chuck-wagon races go on sale anything up to a year in advance. They're sold for the Stampede Park grandstand, which is divided into sections. "A" is best and sells out first; "B" and "C" go next. Then comes the smarter Clubhouse Level (D-E are seats; F-G are Clubhouse Restaurant seats, with tickets sold in pairs only). This is enclosed and air-conditioned, but still offers good views and the bonus of bars, lounge area and restaurants. The top of the stand, or Balcony (J-K) is open, and provides a good vantage point for the chuck-wagon races as you follow their progress around the length of the course. Rodeo tickets range from about $17 to $35, chuck-wagon races from $17 to $40; tickets for the finals of both events are a few dollars more in all seats. For ticket order forms, advance sales and general information, write to Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, Box 1860, Station M, Calgary, AB T2P 2L8 (tel 261-0101, elsewhere in Alberta or North America tel 1-800/661-1260) or call in person at Stampede Headquarters, 1410 Olympic Way SE, or the visitor centre. Tickets are also available from Ticketmaster outlets (tel 270-6700).

Alberta's provincial capital, EDMONTON is among Canada's most northerly cities, and at times - notably in the teeth of its bitter winters - it can seem a little too far north for comfort. Situated above the waters of the North Saskatchewan River, whose park-filled valley winds below the high-rises of downtown, the city tries hard with its festivals, parks, restaurants and urban-renewal projects. With a downtown area that still has the somewhat unfinished feel of a frontier town, however, it's perhaps appropriate that the premier attraction for the vast majority of visitors is a shopping centre, the infamous West Edmonton Mall . This certainly has curiosity value, but not really enough to merit a special journey here. Downtown has a handful of modest sights, though most enjoyment in the city is to be had in Old Strathcona, a rejuvenated "historic" district south of the North Saskatchewan River filled with heritage buildings, modest museums and plenty of eating and drinking venues. Edmonton lacks the big set-piece museums of Calgary and Vancouver, but its Space and Science Centre is a sight within a whisker of the first rank.

"Your Adventure Awaits", announces the brochure to West Edmonton Mall (tel 444-5200 or 1-800/463-4667, www.westedmall.com ), preparing you for a place that gets eleven mentions in the Guinness Book of Records , including its main claim to fame as the "largest shopping mall in the world." Built at a total cost of $1.1 billion, the complex extends over the equivalent of 115 American football fields (or 48 city blocks) and boasts more than 800 shops - of which some 110 are restaurants - plus 19 cinemas, and 11 department stores. The mall's effect on Edmonton has been double-edged: it employs 15,000 people but has captured thirty percent of the city's retail business, thus crippling the downtown shopping area, though it has also succeeded, to everyone's surprise, in attracting twenty million visitors a year (or 55,000 a day).

Funnily enough, many of the shops are rather downmarket (retail hours are Mon-Fri 10am-9pm, Sat 10am-6pm, Sun noon-6pm), though the sheer size of the place is enough to keep you browsing all day. There's almost a queue of superlatives. Its car park is the world's largest, with room for 20,000 cars; it has the world's largest water park (50 million litres of water); it uses enough power to run a town of 50,000 people; and features the world's only indoor bungee jump (jumps from about $60, to $90 if you want the full video and T-shirt package). The world's largest indoor lake (122m long), part of a cluster of attractions known as Deep Sea Adventure (Mon-Thurs 11pm-4.30pm, Fri & Sat 11am-7.30pm, Sun 11am-5.30pm; $13) contains a full-sized replica of Columbus's Santa Maria , and four working submarines - more than are owned by the Canadian navy - offering an underwater trip past some 200 different species of marine life. Other distractions here include dolphin shows ($2), canoe rentals, scuba diving and an underwater aquarium ($3 on its own) laced with the inevitable sharks.

Then there's the world's largest indoor amusement park , the Galaxyland (Mon-Thurs noon-8pm, Fri & Sat 10am-10pm, Sun 11am-7pm; day-pass $29.95), which features such attractions as the Drop of Doom , a thirteen-storey "free-fall experience", and the fourteen-storey Mindbender triple-loop roller coaster. The latter, it comes as no surprise to learn, is the world's largest indoor roller coaster. The World Waterpark , by contrast, is a superb collection of vast swimming pools, immense water slides and wave pools (Mon-Thurs noon-7pm, Fri & Sat 10am-8pm, Sun 11am-6pm; day-pass $29.95, cheaper after 5pm). If you've still any energy, you can also ice-skate on a National Hockey League-size skating rink ($4.50 a session, skate rental $3). You could round off the day or indulge yourself further in one of the mall's many cinemas (including a recently introduced IMAX), the Ice Palace, Dolphin Presentations, Sea Life Caverns, Professor Wem's Golf Adventure, or a variety of clubs. If you want to go the whole hog, then spend the night, in the 354-room Fantasyland Hotel (tel 444-3000 or 1-800/661-6454; $175-240) where 118 of the rooms are intricately equipped and decorated to fulfil various assorted fantasies: Roman, Hollywood, Arabian, Victorian Coach, African, Igloo, Canadian Rail and, most intriguing of all, Truck. Cheaper rooms are available without jacuzzis and mirrored ceilings. There are over 100 places to eat , some lined up on two "theme" streets: Europa Boulevard and a New Orleans-style Bourbon Street.

Bus services to the mall heading west out of downtown include #100, #109, #111 and #113. The monster's location, so far as it has an address (it has five different postal codes and 58 entrances - remember which one you parked by if you've come by car), is 170th Street and 87th Avenue. Maps are available throughout the main building at information booths, where you can also get information and any number of facts and figures. If you get tired, scooters can be rented from about $6 an hour. For more information, call 444-5200 or 1-800/661-8890.