Glenbow Museum – Calgarys City Museum

On the weekend I took the kids to Glenbow Museum here in Calgary and all three of us had a great time.

Glenbow is a museum in the downtown core of Calgary and although it is super expensive to park there during the workweek it is really cheap ($5 cheap) to park for a few hours downtown on the weekend.

So on Saturday we headed downtown for a few hours and spent about three hours down at Glenbow and learned, enjoyed, and were cultured up.

We live in Airdrie, which is a smallish town just north of Calgary and so right after lunch we drove downtown, found some indoor parking, walked through the plus 15 (an elevated indoor walkway that goes between buildings downtown, and made our way to the entrance to the Glenbow Museum.

Entrance Fee and Layout of Glenbow Museum

The cost to get into Glenbow is pretty good. It is $16 for adults and $10 for school aged kids. There is also a deal for a family for $40 but we didn’t have to take advantage of that with just the three of us.

We had a coupon for a free adult when going with a kid so for the three of us it was only $20 – that was great! 🙂

The Glenbow Museum is actually in 4 floors of a downtown building so each floor has a few sections and there is a big old circular staircase that takes you between floors. – Or an elevator for accessibility.

As with any Museum there are changes going on and new installations happening all the time. While we were there we had the following to see

1st floor – Gift shop, snacks, and lockers, also a popup museum of the Calgary Police Service

2nd floor – Asian religions exhibit, Civilizing the Northwest

3rd floor – History and Mavericks of Alberta, Indian and indigenous history of Alberta

4th floor – Rocks and minerals of North America with a specialty on our area, Celebration of achievement of West Africa, 5 centuries of warriors (always a big hit with the boys).

Our Trip To Glenbow

The great thing about Glenbow Museum for families is that here is a lot of hands on and interactive sections. You get a lot of the classic “museum pieces behind glass” and then lots of little video pieces and short movies, and things to touch. Actually I believe every kid in school in Calgary ends up there once or twice in their school career.

We certainly had a great time over the three hours that we spent at the museum.  We each had our favorite parts with my son and I really liking the religious sculptures and artifacts from Asia. Some of the sculptures went back 1700 years. My daughter loved the Alberta history and the gems and mineral area.

We were exhausted by the end. It was a lot of fun with a 13 year old boy and 16 year old girl at the museum. I remember going to the Dinosaur Museum in Drumheller years ago and having my son, then 8 years old looking at the map like a maze and racing through. This in contrast was a lot slower and enjoyable.

One last thing. My 13 year old son is a vlogger, he has a camera and records a lot of our outings around town and he made a great video on our trip with highlights of what we saw and enjoyed at the Museum. Check it out.

If you are visiting Calgary the Glenbow is a great place to go to with a family. Sometimes in the Summer the temperature can get quite hot out and of course the weather can be bone chilling in the Winter so anytime of year is a good time for the Glenbow museum.