Calgary! The place in Canada and also the Expo!

It seems odd, but the only other country I've been to is Mexico (that's because all you need is 'Murica, y'all). This past weekend, I finally got to add another location to that list - the exotic land of Canada! We went to Calgary, in the province of Alberta, to attend Calgary Expo. Apparently, Calgary is Canada's Texas, because they were all about rodeos, horses, and country. It was SO weird. I was like, stop appropriating my culture. This must be how Native Americans and Indians feel when girls wear feather headdresses and bindis to music festivals or whatever.



We flew in on Thursday. After cabbing it to our hotel, we went to the market across the street, which was on my list of places to go in Calgary. It ended up being pretty lackluster, but it DID have a convenience store where they sold candy! Canadian candy! OMG is the chocolate so much better there, for serious. I thought Cadbury only made those chocolate eggs; turns out, they make all kinds of yummy chocolate bars!!


Oh, and take a look at Canadian money! It's like it's not even real, it's made of plastic or something. And it's clear! WTF, I can't take this seriously. Anyway, we also walked around the nearby Chinatown, and had dinner at the Barley Pub.








Friday was our Expo day, the only day we got tickets for. It was the first day of the convention, and they kicked it off with a cosplay parade from our hotel to the convention center! It was a really cool, unique idea, and a great way to showcase all the myriad cosplayers. They were separated into theme groups, movies/tv, anime, Star Wars, superheroes, steampunk, zombies, video games, and a few more I can't remember. Anthony Daniels (C3PO!) was at the head of the parade, followed by some other minor celebrities (ish), including Felicia Day!

The exhibit floor was split into a few different locations in this fairground thing. There was a lot of really cool stuff, but I couldn't indulge too much since anything I bought had to fit into my carry-on luggage. I did end up getting a cool laser-etched glass (I got one with the white tree of Gondor on it), a Iron Man/Hulk shirt that says Science Bros from WeLoveFine, and a cat ear hat which really came in handy and I wore almost immediately. 

We went to one panel called Aliens and Beyond with Mark Rolston and Jenette Goldstein, who played Drake and Vasquez (rocking the best ladyarm game in the history of cinema, rivaled only by Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2). And then continuing with the Aliens theme of the weekend, we went to a spotlight on Bill Paxton panel. He was just as charming as he was at WonderCon! I feel like he's really enjoying his stint on the con circuit, he just seems so happy to be up there on stage.

Calgary Expo also hosted a few outside events in their EXPO-sed series. That night, we went to Middle-Earth EXPO-sed. Mark Ferguson (who played the elf Gil-Galad in LOTR) was the host for the evening. Richard Taylor, head of Weta, the special effects company in charge of doing basically anything cool-looking in LOTR, was there and talked a bit before spending the rest of the 2.5 hour evening making a guy into an Orc. It was pretty amazing. Then they brought out the special guests from LOTR: Billy Boyd (Pippin), Sean Astin (Samwise), Craig Parker (Haldir), and Sadwyn Brophy (Arwen's son that she sees in a vision). They talked for a while about how incredibly awesome LOTR is, and then they went backstage and the special

guests from The Hobbit came out: Jed Brophy (Nori and the IRL dad to Sadwyn [side note: I literally just found that out while looking up people's names for this post. Mind=blown.]), Manu Bennett (Azog), Mark Hadlow (Dori), and Dean O'Gorman (Fili). The whole night was like a variety show - in addition to the panel-y part, they did some improv games, several songs, and some swordplay demonstrations! It was a very fun night.




On Saturday, some cold white stuff started falling from the sky; I was told it is called 'snow'. We decided to brave the elements anyway and check out some sights. We went to Calgary Tower (side note: what's with all these cities having towers? What is their point, besides being a tourist attraction? They seem to have no real function.). It's 191 meters tall - wait, what's a meter? In American, that's 626 feet tall! It was built to celebrate Canada's centennial in 1967, and it's the tallest structure in Canada except for whatever's in Toronto that's apparently taller. So I guess maybe like second or third tallest, then. It's got this cool clear floor, so you can step on it and feel surprisingly scared looking

straight down to the ground. They also have a restaurant at the top that rotates, but unfortunately it was closed for a private event that night so we didn't get to eat there. 













Oh, and this is how I made it through the cold cold day with all the snow:

Cat ear hat, scarf around face, tucked under sunglasses. Oh yeah.


Saturday evening, we went to another Expo-sed, this time for Aliens. It was the largest cast reunion since the premiere in 1986! Everyone was there: Sigourney Weaver, Paul Reiser, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Hehn (Newt's now a school teacher! She says no one knows she was in Aliens, it's like her secret double life!), Jenette Goldstein, Mark Rolston, and Ricco Ross (who was on our flight!).



On Sunday, we took a walk around Prince's Island Park, which was right next to our hotel. It was pretty beautiful, and there were tons of dogs having dog parties. Then, it was back to warm and sunny LA!