I’ve lived in Calgary for quite a few years now, but up until this year, I had never attended The Lilac Festival. Every year, I said I would go, but never made any actual plans to do so. This year, I had no excuse. The Lilac Festival happened right outside of my apartment!
The Lilac Festival is basically a street festival, celebrating Lilacs (naturally). 13 blocks are closed down, and the street is lined with entertainment, craft and food stalls. From 10am-6pm, the streets were jam packed with people milling about. This year it was rather cold and even rainy during the morning, so I was told that a considerably less amount of people showed up. I just looked on Wikipedia, and it states that an estimated 120 000 people showed up. Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with that many people!
I live on the first floor, and we sleep with our window open because we live in a ridiculously hot building. I’ve gotten used to most of the night time/early morning noises on my street, but bright and early Sunday morning, new strange sounds woke me up…hundreds of vendor stalls were being set up along the street. Guess what was set up right outside of my window? A MINI DONUT TRUCK. I was taunted by the delicious smells all morning and was determined to buy some donuts before the day was through. For some reason I didn’t end up buying any! I treated myself to some Indian food (I could eat butter chicken and naan all day long) and a giant raspberry lemonade.
This picture is a few blocks down from where my apartment, but it gives you an idea of what I saw when I looked out my window. I walked the whole route with a friend, we certainly came across our fair share of interesting people and vendors. I’ll do it again next year, but I’ll be smart and buy some mini donuts.
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