Trains and Grizzly Bears, A Canadian Roadtrip - Rocky Mountaineer Day 3

Wednesday, September 4 - Banff Day 1

Today is our first of two days in Banff National Park where we are staying at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel.  As part of our Rocky Mountaineer trip several tours were included and a tour of Banff is the one we took today.  It started early so we were up at 7:00 and were outside just before 8:00 to catch the bus.  The weather was a bit brisk and we were glad we had worn warm clothes.

I won’t go into much detail on the tour as pictures do a better job, but we really enjoyed it.  We started out at Bow Falls which is actually right behind the hotel.

Then we took the gondola to the top of Sulphur Mountain, which had wonderful views of the surrounding area.

Waiting for our gondola to the top of Sulfur Mountain.

 

The town of Banff far below.

A gondola arriving.

An aerial view of the Banff Springs Hotel.  You can see Bow Falls that we visited earlier right behind the hotel.

 

This large facility at the top of Sulfur Mountain has exhibits, places to eat and viewing areas .

After taking the gondola back down, our next stop was the Park Canada administration building in Banff.  The building was under renovation, but there were some beautiful gardens to wander around in.

 

 

From there it was off to Surprise Corner which had great views of the Banff Springs Hotel.  It's called the Surprise Corner because as you drive along the road you round a bend and are suddenly surprised by a great view of the hotel.

After Surprise Corner the next stop was the Hoodoos, which was another interesting area.

Our last stop was Lake Minnewanka.

The red Adirondack chairs were part of a program by Parks Canada to get people to visit Canadian parks.  They were placed in parks at scenic spots to allow visitors to enjoy the beautiful views.

We really enjoyed the tour and the bus driver / tour guide gave us an informative and interesting commentary the whole way.  We have been to Banff several times before, but I have to admit, we have always been on our way somewhere else and not spent much time looking around so today was great for us and gave us a chance so appreciate the beauty of Banff.  There is so much to do here we will have to come back and spend more time in the area.

At the end of our bus tour we were given the option of being driven back to the hotel or dropped off in the town of Banff.  We opted to be dropped off in town as we wanted to spend some time there.  Banff is very popular and there were lots of people out on the streets.  We were hungry so we went looking for Maggie’s which was supposed to be a good Mexican restaurant.  After a bit of wandering we found it and decided to sit out on the open deck as the cool morning had turned into a warm and beautiful day.  The menu was somewhat limited (we are in Canada after all), but the Mexican food was good and we had a very enjoyable meal sitting out in the warm sun.

After lunch we walked around a bit and found a local outdoor market that was held every Wednesday so we spent some time walking around that.  There was everything from fruits and vegetables to local crafts so it was quite interesting.  It was getting late in the afternoon so we found our way to the nearest bus stop to catch bus #2 to take us back to the hotel.

When we got there, a lady who was waiting for a different bus told us that we had just missed the #2 bus, but there would another one in 20 minutes.  We sat and waited and enjoyed the beautiful weather until the bus showed up and then took the short ride to the hotel.

We spent the rest of our afternoon relaxing as we were still tired from our long day on the train and early mornings.  After resting for a bit we decided to explore the hotel a bit and found ourselves out on a deck with beautiful views of the mountains beyond.  There was a Mexican restaurant out there and although we weren’t hungry for anything at the moment, we thought it might be a good place to eat tomorrow as it was in a great location with wonderful views.

A great view from the terrace.  The restaurant we hope to visit is the terrace to the right.

We wandered around a bit more and then wondered what we should do for dinner.  We weren’t really hungry as we had a late lunch, but we knew we should eat something or we would be hungry later.  We found a little sandwich shop and bought sandwiches to bring back to the room with us.  They were very good, but turned out to was to big for our limited appetite and neither one of us were able to finish.

I downloaded all the pictures we had taken so far and backed them up on my travel computer while Val did some reading, but we were pretty tired and called it an early night.  Tomorrow is a free day and we are looking forward to sleeping in and catching up on our sleep.  One slight worry for me is that I have a bit of scratchy throat tonight, but hopefully it’s nothing.