Winter vacation to Canada

Dear readers, hope each one of you had a great start to the new year. Happy New Year 2023! Wishing for joy, love, prosperity and peace for everyone. So how did you spend your New Year Eve? For most of us, spending quality time with family would be the highlight which brings happiness and meaning to our lives. Some of us get winter break with our kids, some of us take vacation days being the end of the year and some of us travel. Most, if not all, enjoy the holiday season as it is the time of giving and celebration. We like to travel and this post is about our winter vacation to Canada.

Our winter break coincides with our kids’ winter holidays. My older one is in college and gets 3 weeks off, while my younger one who is a high schooler gets 2 weeks of break. I am an educator and get the same 2 weeks off and my husband uses his vacation days- between 5-7 days. So we get to take a short vacation every winter and this break we took one of the longest vacation of 10 days! Read on about our winter travel experience to Calgary, Canada.

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Background

We consider ourselves travel enthusiasts and try to travel twice a year. If you have been following my blog posts, you will remember that we went to Italy in the summer and on the way visited Calgary, Canada for 3 days. We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary there with both my sisters and their families, and then celebrated our older one’s birthday in Rome. You can read these posts if you are interested about out Italy trips-

Italy trip part 1 and Italy trip part 2

Last summer 2021 we went to New York and Pittsburgh, as a way to also do a campus tour as my older one started her college in the fall. In the winter of 2021 we went to San Francisco, California. 2020 was the year of no travel for us due to the pandemic. In the summer of 2019 we had traveled to India and 3 countries in Europe. We loved visiting Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic, and it was special as it was our first Europe trip. Now that we have added Italy to the list, we would love to visit other countries in Europe but that may happen in couple years as next summer we are already planning to go to India which will be after 4 years, the longest gap ever! Winter 3019 was a road trip to Disney World.

Related post:

Our Disney World experience

Our first Europe trip

Winter vacation to Canada

To give you a background, we have visited Calgary 4 times. Our 1st trip was in summer 2013, then we went in winter 2015, and next 2 times were last year. We went in June 2022 for 3 days and 10 days in December. So read on a short version of our holidays travel to Canada in today’s post.

We flew on Christmas Day, December 25th. The flight from Houston, Texas to Calgary, Canada is about 4 hours. We save an hour when we go as Calgary is 1 hour behind as they follow the Pacific time PST. We started at 6 pm and reached at 9:30 pm and were home by 10:30 pm. Calgary is not a big airport especially if you compare to Houston. Calgary International Airport called YYC is the main international airport serving Calgary’s city and Alberta in Canada, being the busiest airport in the region. YYC Airport is a hub for Air Canada, Lynx Air and Westjet. Calgary Airport is the fourth busiest airport in Canada, serving flights to North and Central America, Europe and Asia. IAH is the Houston airport and is the hub of United airlines. IAH also called the Bush Intercontinental airport offers service to more Mexican destinations than any other U.S. Airport. Houston Airport is named after George H. W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States. The last comparison of statistics would be that YYC handled 17,957,780 passengers in 2019, 5,675,483 passengers in 2019 during COVID times and 6,326,406 passengers in 2021 whereas IAH registered 45,264,059 passengers in 2019, 24,690,222 passengers in 2020 and 33,677,118 passengers in 2021.

 Since it was late on Christmas Day and we had already exchanged gifts at home in Houston, we spent the evening cozy and comfortable at my sister’s home. After eating late dinner, kids had hot chocolate under the Christmas tree and we went to bed just after midnight.

Places to visit in Calgary

You can read my previous post about places to visit in Calgary when we traveled to Jasper, Banff, Lake Louise and Lake Moraine in the summer of 2022. This time in winter we went to Waterton National Park, Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Drumheller and Edmonton to see the Northern Lights. The highlight for the winter trip to Canada was the northern lights and of course spending quality time with family. The 4 cousins range in age from 7-19 years and it was nice to see them bond, play, explore and enjoy together. We didn’t do skiiing this time around but really had fun snow tubing at Calgary Olympic park. Snow tubing is 1 of the safest and most fun snow activities to do and is a must for us.

On 26th December we went to Waterton National Park and stayed overnight returning back the next day. Read more here. According to their official site, the prairies of Alberta meet the peaks of the Rocky Mountains in Waterton Lakes National Park. Clear lakes, thundering waterfalls, rainbow-colored streams, colorful rocks and mountain vistas await hikers and sightseers. Waterton packs a big natural punch into a relatively small and accessible area.

You need a pass to explore any of the National Parks in Canada and there are more than 10! We also visited the Banff National Park in this trip and Lake Louise was lovely even in frigid cold. We enjoyed snow fall there and at Banff and took many pictures along the frozen lakes, and snow covered mountains and peaks all around.

We also visited Drumheller, the dinosaur town. According to drumheller.com towering high above the Drumheller Valley, Tyra the World’s Largest Dinosaur offers visitors a unique and breath-taking view of the badlands. Visitors can climb 106 stairs inside the dinosaur to experience the Drumheller Valley from Tyra’s gaping jaw. We also saw Hoodoos, which are naturally eroded land formations, and stand 20 feet tall.

We explored downtown and watched the new year fireworks at the Calgary tower. The tower stands 191 meters tall and offers the best view in the city. Rocky Mountains, foothills and prairies give a great view. We didn’t take the 360 view but definitely another time.

In addition to daily outings and visiting nearby places, the highlight of the vacation was watching the Northern Lights. The first day at Banff we got the glimpse of it and since then downloaded the app and started chasing the Northern Lights. The KPI index tells the clarity and visibility probability both have to be high as well as low cloud coverage. One night we traveled to Edmonton to check and it was almost 3 hours drive 1 way. We ate dinner at Savoy restaurant and came back with no success. The last night before our flight at 8 am on Jan 4, we finally had a high chance of watching and we drove for couple of hours and there it was. Dancing northern lights! So glorious. We even saw Steve- a straight line going from horizon up to the sky. We enjoyed the show for about 30 min. It came and paused but the minutes in between when we could watch the spectacular northern lights were amazing! It was a once in a lifetime experience for us! So worth the wait and time spent chasing it!

Summarize

To wrap up, we had a wonderful family winter vacation to Canada where we spent 10 days- 1 of the longest winter trip done. We visited Waterton National park & Banff National park as well as Lake Louise, Edmonton and Drumheller. It was relaxing fun and a lovely experience visiting my younger sister and family.

Dear readers, we would love to hear from you. Have you visited any parts of Canada? How did you spend your New Year eve? Any travel experience from 2022 that you would like to share?

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