Hello, readers! I've just returned home from a fun vacation to Canada -- specifically to Banff National Park in Alberta. The place is renowned for skiing at the "Ski Big 3" destinations of Lake Louise, Banff Sunshine, and Mount Norquay, and my husband and I decided to check it out for ourselves.
I often blog day-to-day stories of a vacation, but I think my recap this time will be a little less chronological and a bit more "random observational." That's because each day of the trip was largely similar: skiing somewhere in the day and then heading into the town at night for eating, drinking, walking, and shopping. But there were certainly highlights from each day, and I want to record them on my blog for my own aging memory and your possible entertainment.
First, a few general observations. Banff National Park is a truly beautiful place. I am spoiled to live in Colorado, where beautiful scenery is easy to take for granted. But the Canadian Rockies do have some little bit extra. There's something about the landscape that feels more fantastical, something about the way they hold the snow that's a bit more magical. Take the first sunrise we saw, while having breakfast at the hotel where we stayed:
Watching sunrises has sort of becoming a thing my husband and I have done on several of our trips, but we really didn't have to wake up early for this one. Up north in Canada, right at the winter solstice, the sun was coming up past 8:30 am and setting barely after 4:30 pm. Between so much darkness and so much time skiing, we actually spent a lot of time sleeping on this vacation -- sleeping in as we rarely ever do anymore, and always feeling like it was time to go to bed early.
Stepping out of our room at the Juniper Hotel and Bistro was always a pleasant experience, because there was always a smell in the air of a campfire burning. I never actually saw a fireplace anywhere, but the aroma of a freshly-served smoked cocktail was somehow always there.
Being in the room was not as pleasant. Every time the heat kicked on or off -- which was often -- it was preceded by a clicking noise like you'd use to train a dog. I myself felt properly trained to anticipate the furnace before the end of the trip.
There are a lot of people from other countries working in Banff. I lost of how many Australian accents I encountered. A server from the U.K. remarked that my own speech reminded her briefly of her home, before I clarified I'm from Colorado. (A place many people seemed to find quite exotic, when they asked.) According to Google, anyway, all the seasonal jobs in Banff make for lots of work visas given out, and lots of people from other countries eager to snap them up.
The "license plate game" is very difficult to play in Banff National Park. With only 10 Canadian provinces to spot (and 3 territories you likely won't), it felt like "collecting them all" would be doable in a nearly week-long trip to a national park. But everyone's car is filthy from driving around in the slush, covering up a huge chunk of the license plates. And, it seems, most Canadian provinces don't require a plate on the front of the car -- just the back; so you'll get no help walking back to your car after a day of skiing.
Conversions really are a challenge for an American traveling anywhere else in the world. You can quickly get a sense of the value of a Canadian dollar relative to an American dollar -- but since they're both "dollars," the conversion never becomes a thing you just do automatically. Celsius temperature wasn't too difficult, as the only numbers we really needed in Canada in the winter were "below freezing," "just above freezing," and "what to set the thermostat to." (click!) But gas -- by the liter, at Canadian dollars -- was inscrutable. And my very favorite conversion moment of the trip came in a candy store where something was being offered at $4 per 100 grams. Might as well have asked us to calculate how much dilithium would be consumed for each light year of travel at warp 8 -- which seems equally made up. (Yes, I suppose we Americans do this to ourselves.)
In the next few days of posts, I'll highlight some places we visited in town. And, of course, the skiing. But -- "spoiler alert" -- I both had a lovely time, and am glad to now be back home for the holidays.
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