Beautiful Banff, inside and out.
Banff is the classic perfect, picturesque town. It’s hard to beat being dropped off at the stunning Fairmont Banff Springs. This is how a castle should look.
We spent a lot of time exploring inside the chateau – it is enormous, and you can wander through corridors for hours, discovering room after room with delicious visual surprises.
This ended up being our hangout. We had the whole room to ourselves most of the time, and had fun with the fireplace and wall furnishings. But it was a hard choice – immediately above our hangout was an intimate mezzanine bar with comfortable leather chairs and polished wood bar that also beckoned. We compromised by bringing the merlot downstairs to the hangout. There may have been cheese – and I have strange memories of vegemite sandwiches.
The Alhambra ballroom was enormous. It was configured with a long single dining table when we were there, with this fellow on guard.
A visit to the Banff Park Museum is compulsory. Aptly described as a rustic railway pagoda, the architecture is quite unusual. Plus the range of occupants.
Walking back to the chateau through the trees was simply magical. The light through the trees. Sigh.
The tourist thing is to ride the Banff Gondola to the top of Sulphur Mountain to check out the views. Why can’t Canada share a few mountains with Australia? There are so many!
No pix, but it’s definitely recommended to drop in on the Banff Upper Hot Springs to enjoy the natural hot spring pool.
