DAY-05 Six Becomes Eight, We're Outbound for Banff

Day-05: Monday, September 7, 2015

Starting Location: Fairmont Palliser Hotel, Calgary, AB

Ending Location: Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, AB

Today Canada celebrates Labor Day just as in the U.S.

It's moving day so we were up and packed but had plenty of time to see what downtown Calgary had to offer. We met with Pat, Jack, Diane and Greg around 9 AM in the hotel lobby to decide what we'd do for the morning. Our plan developed with a walk through the city center, a coffee break followed by lunch atop the Calgary Tower.

The Thirsty Almond

Like many cities, Calgary has dedicated several streets to pedestrian traffic. It was early and as it was a holiday other that hospitality service workers and tourists there were few people out.





The streets are decorated with sculptures, pianos, wind blocks and gardens. Around 9:30 we stopped at Cafe Artigiann of coffee, hot chocolate and seaweed drinks as well as a pastry or two.

At one point of the walk, Sheila decided to revert to her early days as she sat down at one of the street pianos to hammer out a tune. Meanwhile Diane reminisced about days before cell phones.

Continuing our walk we came to the Bow River and crossed onto Prince's Island Park. Throughout the city the flowers in both gardens and hanging pots are amazingly vibrant.

The Thirsty Almond Balsam Fir

The holographic head sculpture mentioned yesterday was on our walking route; we stopped for a few photos and for a couple of us to go into the head.

Promptly at 11 AM we arrived at the Calgary Tower and proceeded to elevate to the top for a walk around view of Calgary.

The tower has a plexiglas deck where one can stand over the city with nothing but glass and air between your feet and the ground 500 feet below.

We then proceeded into the 360 Restaurant & Lounge for lunch. The restaurant is a rotating platform. We had reserved a window side table but as it would be all the tables are window side.


As with many restaurants, crayons are provided for the kids; in our case that would be Diane and Greg. Diane placed a crayon on the stationery window ledge and Greg started his iPhone timer to measure the orbital speed of the restaurant, reputed to be 45 minutes per orbit.

Lunch was served with a variety of orders being enjoyed. I had steelhead trout over roasted veggies and it was great. Others had pasta and an interesting Bison Grilled Cheese.

Well as 45 minutes approached the stationary crayon was nowhere to be seen; no worries Diane took off to check with other tables to see if the crayon was still in place. She politely spoke with various restaurant guests letting them know about the crayon and I'm sure warning them not to touch, move or in anyway interfere with her scientific experiment with orbital speeds. Turns out the restaurant revolves at closer to one orbit per hour as at 57+ minutes the crayon reappeared meaning we had completed one full circle. The restaurant was a good choice, good food and crayon entertainment to boot while 500 feet above the city.

We returned to the hotel, checked out and soon thereafter were joined by Jan & Pete who had arrived from Glacier NP to make our group of six larger by two, we were now an Eight Person MART.

At 1 PM we met Sam our driver for the day. The eight of us boarded the 24 passenger van, basically a row for each of us for the 2-hour ride to Banff.

En-route we passed the Calgary Olympic Park and passed into the front range area of the Canadian Rockies east of Canmore.

By about 3 PM we had arrived at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel for check-in. As most of the rooms weren't available just yet we proceeded to the lounge for drinks while we waited. By about 5 PM we had all gone to our rooms to prep for dinner. Rooms are nice, not huge but well appointed. The Banff Springs Hotel is enormous, we'll likely never really figure out where everything is before it's time to leave on Wednesday.

By our standard the weather was cold, in the 40's I'd say. Jan and Pete walked into town while the others of us took the local bus for the brief ride down the hill. As we are "seniors" our bus fares were only $1C each, half off the regular price.

We arrived down town early for our dinner reservations so after traversing several of the streets and making a pharmacy stop, we stopped in for drinks at St. James Gate Irish Pub. At 7:30 we arrived at the Saltlik Steakhouse for dinner. Meals ranged from steaks to pasta and in my case a grilled salmon dish. From the remaining visual evidence I'd say that everyone enjoyed their meals and drinks as well.

Almond at the Saltlik Restaurant

By 9:30 we were done and ready to return to the hotel. Not knowing the bus schedule, we took taxis back, a reasonable $10C fare for four people.

A few of us went for nightcaps (the drink kind of nightcap) but that was short lived and by 11 or so everyone was tucked into their rooms for the night.

Trying the "Mirror Selfie" in our room.