photo by gusto

A likeable and booming place, whose downtown skyscrapers soared almost overnight on the back of an oil bonanza in the 1970s, CALGARY’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.