Banff Part I

So despite the fact that I have about a bazillion things to do workwise, I am SO not in the mood for work so thought I'd work on journalling our trip to Banff (the non-fat part).

Saturday:

We drove to Calgary, where we spent some quality time with our niece Kira, then drop onwards to Banff. Arriving at about 3:30pm we found the map a bit deceiving in terms of distance: we thought everything was a lot farther away from things then they were. Which is mostly a good thing LOL So it turns out that our hotel, the Rimrock Resort, is a very short walk to the Gondola ride and the Hot Springs. Bonus! Our hotel was really beautiful and our room got upgraded so we got a view of Rundle (I believe) Mountain. The room itself was nice but nothing to right home about...it just had all the basics. After checking in we decided to grab a few phamplets of local activities and then take the bus into town for some window shopping and dinner. Since we aren't much for clubbing we decided we would shop until about 8:30pm (stores closed at 9pm) then go for dinner. We had fun looking into the shops and when we headed to the Saltlik (it was suggested to us) we were informed that it would be a 1.5 hour wait! Guess everyone had the same idea as us LOL So we wandered over to Giorgio's Trattoria to see if the wait would be less there. It was only about ten minutes there.

Giorgio's was kind of a fancy place. I decided to order a crab risotto and Tyler got a stuffed pork chop. Then, last minute I decided to order the antipasto appetizer. What an experience that was :-) Tyler and I aren't that fancy of people. I thought it was like that mixed stuff and crackers...instead it was a platter of greens, weird meat slices, olives (yummy), white beans, and strong cheese. Some of it was good, some okay, and some gross. We had fun with it but probably wouldn't order it again! The rest of our meal was good. Then we each had dessert...and a few drinks. Our bill came to about $130! Just for the two of us...we are expensive.

Then we took a brisk walk to the bus stop & waited for it to come...then saw it coming on the other side of the road. So we ran across and flagged it down. The bus driver was super nice, and the bus went right to our hotel door. The moutain air really exhausted us so we settled in for an "early" night shortly before midnight and not sure what we were doing the next day. We were considering:

-ATV ride

-White Water Rafting

-Horse Ride

-Gondola

-Hot Springs

-Shopping