Banff Day 1

thursday, may 14

Amy, Eric and i arrived to Calgary airport pretty much on time and starving.
waited for about 2 hours for Paul to show up and off we went with a nice Nissan full size rental.
i believe we had wendy's for lunch that day somewhere in Calgary.
first stop was the grocery store. EXTREMELY OVERPRICED on basically everything.
however, it's still the most economic way for the 4 of us.
next the hostel, which is pretty nice.
very good on noise insulation. although it's a bit of a drive from town, but we can see the mountains right outside.
actually u can see the mountains pretty much everywhere u go.

our first tour was at the Cave & Basin Museum.
it's pretty late when we got there, about an hour before they close.
and we ran into a problem because someone forgot to check for new ticketing procedures at the museum and we had a bit of an argument with an arrogant receptionist.
anyway, we finally got the problem fixed and it was totally worth going to that museum.
very nice sights to see and we smelt some very strong sulfur - this cave was the first discovered hot spring of Banff.
very interesting history about it too.

it started SNOWING when we went out to walk 2 short planned trails at the museum site.
i didn't have my fleece with me, only my wind/rain jacket and a long sleeve thin breathable shirt under.
it was quite cold and wet when we went back into the car about an hour later.
but the trails were amazing!
sulfur, streams, and water everywhere!

we cooked our dinner at the self served kitchen back in the hostel.
it was a bit of a scramble but we ate somehow.
then off we went to sleep.
very exhausting day for me because i didn't sleep the night before and i had very little rest on the plane - i had to finish off the Benjamin Button movie... only watched half of it during my Edmonton trip.