A Day in Banff

While Kristi and Steve took off early to master another mountain hike, Tom and I slept in again! Just a slow relaxing morning. I cut Tom's hair, and we both took long, hot showers at the restrooms in the campground. Clean, great water pressure, hot and no one else was there, I guess they all went hiking?

Banff has a great bus system in place, and the campground is on the edge of town, so we caught the local bus into town. First stop the Banff Springs Hotel as it is located uphill from town. That way when we went back downtown it would be almost all downhill.

This hotel is HUGE! And BEAUTIFUL. End of story. I am sorry we didn't sign up for a tour, it is so big you don't even know where to go to explore all the various public spaces. We did visit the Heritage Hall which outlined the history of the hotel. All these beautiful hotels were pretty much put in place by the Canadian Pacific Railway company to help support the expansion of the railroad. The company's perspective was..."we can't export this scenery, so we will import the tourists." The Springs was, and is, an internationally renown hotel. Wow!

We headed down the Bow River Falls trail I had done with Kristi yesterday, but its is such a great walk and wanted Tom to see it. Great walk to downtown, and then by that time it was lunch time! Should have lunched up at the hotel, but really I was afraid to look at the menus and what it might cost....!?

Strolled several streets and the smell of pizza drew us to a cute little place on the side street. Couldn't get outside, too nice a day, everyone wanted outside...
Ordered their specialty pizza, "Big Bird". Yum, chicken, smoked bacon, red onion, pesto, mozzarella, and goat cheese. But what was really crazy is that they serve it recommending a rosemary infused chili oil that you mix with honey depending upon how sweet you like it. What?? Really, we dipped our pizza into chili oil with honey, and it was excellent! And their soup of the day was gazpacho, which I love. It was very good, and pretty spicy.

Even though it was a beautiful day, we did spend some time at the Whyte Museum. It is a combination of a Banff history museum and art gallery. I love museums that include art. We took a couple of short tours with the docent and then had time on our own. Not a big museum, but the artifacts and local history were really interesting. The gallery highlighted the work of the Whytes, a married couple that loved the Canadian Rockies, and both were artists from the 1930s through the 50s. Most of their pieces were li landscapes of the Rockies. I liked their work, and the collection includes art pieces from other artists.

We headed to the Cascade Gardens after stopping for an ice cream because it was just such great weather to be out walking! These are the gardens that surround the Parks Canada Administration offices. Lots of terraces, gazebos, ponds with waterfalls and lots of colorful flowers. I strolled and took yet more pictures while Tom enjoyed his ice cream.

Hopped on the local bus #2, to get back to the campground, caught up with Kristi and Steve, shared stories, made some dinner and went to bed!Read more