Check Out Centro's New Pinterest Boards!

There's been quite a lot of buzz about a little website called Pinterest lately. Most of it good, some of it grumpy, and I have to admit that at first I thought it was going to be like Instagram for websites. Instead of crappy, over-filtered pictures of kittens and hipsters it would be crappy, over-filtered images of people's favourite arts and crafts. Possibly even some yarn-bombing.

However, I was somewhat wrong. Pinterest is a pretty great way to share visual information.

Instagram is still full awful, emo, preachy-ass hipsters, though.

 

Luckily, we have the Instagram Rebuttal Meme to toss a whole basket-full of Snark at all those goddamn hipsters.

 

At any rate, I've put up a few boards with some great photos of the rooms and suites from the various Hotel properties that I work for. So, if you're into design, travel, or you just want to see what kinds of hotels inspire our various Boutique Hotel Concepts come on over and take a look!

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.

The Best Cafe's in Montgomery

Montgomery is often overlooked as a neighbourhood. Sure, in a lot of way it doesn't hold a candle to the more established leisure neighbourhoods in Calgary like Kensington, or Marda Loop. So, it's true that there aren't many cafe's in Montgomery when compared to other areas of Calgary. But, that's not to say that there aren't any good cafes there at all. This is false. There are three.

Lazy Loaf & Kettle

The LLK is kind of like a greasy spoon-type lace, but without the greasy. It's a very laid back cafe that serves top notch comfort food for breakfast, and as their name suggests they brew a mean mug of tea. Overall, it's cozy, clean and well-prepared. The perfect place to kill some time with a good book, or to pretend to be writing a novel on your Macbook (apparently).

Extreme Bean Cafe

It's not that Extreme, don't worry. The coffee here is quite good. Probably better then at the Lazy loaf and Kettle, although I am a pretty picky coffee drinker, so that's not saying all that much. They do have a more fleshed out lunch and dinner menu when compared with the other cafe's on this list, so this would be a surer bet for anyone looking for a god lunch or dinner.

Angel's Cappuccino & Ice Cream

The ultimate in legal highs. Cappuccino and Ice Cream is what I plan on feeding my kids before I drop them off at their Grandparents' place (Give me socks for my birthday 3 years in a row, eh?). At any rate, the ice cream here is delicious, and the combination of it with coffee is utterly fantastic.

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.

Alberta's New Distracted Driving Law

Being a Boutique Motel, we here at Centro tend to have a lot of guests who drive in to get here. It is, after all, sort of the point of staying at a Motel, you are guaranteed of having somewhere you can park your car. However, there's a new law coming into effect here in Alberta that's going to make life a little more difficult for anyone driving in from out of province.

Have you ever used your cell-phone while driving? Obviously not for texting, people who try and drive while texting deserve a swift kick in the butt, but just a regular phone call? Well, starting on September 1^st, 2011 that can earn you a fairly hefty fine here in Alberta.

The new Law, Bill 16, doesn't stop there. Gone are the days when you can eat in our car worry-free, from next week on eating while driving also constitutes a violation of Bill 16. This makes me a little sad. After all, it kind of makes Drive-Thrus sort of pointless. I mean, if you;re going to have to stop and pull over to eat the food anyways, what's the point of using a Drive-Thru to get it?

So, just to recap, from now on in Alberta you cannot Eat, use your phone, or listen to headphones while driving or you'll get a $172.00 ticket. God help you if try doing all three things at once.

The New Best Way To Get to the Calgary Airport From Downtown

There are two vital facts that you need to know before the rest of this article will make sense. One, the Calgary Airport Authority are jerks. Two, Google Maps will lie to you for the next few months. You see, there have been a few changes in the way the Calgary International Airport is accessed.

I recently drove to the airport to pick up my girlfriend. I hadn't really planned on how to get there, I've always gone via Barlow Trail. However, the Calgary Airport Authority decided to expand into some new runways and closed the access from that side. If you go that way, there is a detour, and that detour adds another half hour on to your drive time.

Due to the closure of Barlow Trail's airport access, the quickest way to the airport is to get there from the North. This puts the relatively new Ring Road as being the best way to get to the airport without running into abysmal traffic or being delayed by the most roundabout route since Cook tried to sail from Britain to India through the Canadian North-West Passage.

There is a decent bonus for us in it, though. It makes getting from the Centro Motel to the airport a lot more convenient. I suppose it would be fair to say that about all the hotels and motels near Motel Village, but they can go write their own damn blogs. Although I live in downtown Calgary, I now drive out to Stoney Trail to get to the airport within half an hour. And, for the foreseeable future, that's going to be the best way to get to the good ol' YYC.

 It's entirely unintuitive, but it's the best way to get to the airport now.

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village and now on a completely unintuitive, yet direct, path from the airport. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. Also, our parking lot is just massive. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.



How Does a Boutique Motel Cash in on the 2011 Heritage Classic?

Sporting events are always a happy bit of news for hotels. After all, it brings more people into town, and those people need places to sleep before and after the game/match/fight. The hard part for us is somehow using the incoming event to entice more visitors to Calgary into more guests at Centro Motel. However, there are a few things that help us to stand out from the rest of the Motel Village and Montgomery crowd.

Our cause isn't totally helpless, in fact I think we have a pretty good shot here. Our rooms are frequently complimented for their cleanliness and quality. Having two Queen Beds to a room is helpful for a family coming in. That, combined with the little fridges in the room and enough parking stalls to host a truck convention puts us in a pretty solid place to grab the attention of any incoming visitors.

Of course, I should probably explain what the Heritage Classic is here. For those of you who don't know what it is, and you live in Canada, you should probably take the time to build a basic understanding of the sport of Hockey. We're kind of obsessed with it in this country, and a good basic grasp of the game will help you out in a lot of social situations.

The Heritage Classic is the second outdoor game of the 2010/11 season. It's a regular season game, it's two normal teams playing a game that still counts as part of the regular season, what makes it special are all the other hockey games and festivities that are going on the weekend of the 18^th to the 20^th. As part of the weekend festivities for the Classic, the Abbotsford Heat will host the Oklahoma City Barons in an American Hockey League (AHL) game at the Scotiabank Saddledome on February 18, an alumni game will be played at the nearby McMahon Stadium between former Flames and Canadiens players on the 19th, and the Calgary Hitmen are scheduled to face the Regina Pats outdoors on February 21 in a Western Hockey League (WHL) game.

Yeeha! That's a lot of Hockey!

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village, the Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms that are perfect fof a weekend of great hockey. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.