Trip to Banff: Day 4 (or, all of Banff in a day)

Today we had the afternoon free. I planned to see everything I wanted to see in Banff today in order to free up my Friday for other sights in the Canadian rockies. And, indeed, I succeeded in this goal of seeing everything I desired in Banff.

These pictures accompany this day's adventures.

After lunch (a basic cod dish, a basic beef dish, a good salad, and chocolate cheesecake to die for), I headed downtown and walked the length of the main street and a few side streets. The downtown is cute and very walkable. (Most tourists come in tour buses and therefore don't have cars.) The buildings are a wide assortment of styles built in the last hundred years but all looked clean and new. It was nice. There were also small plaques by many buildings describing when they were built and what they were originally used for. Them, and the mere fact of their existence, really demonstrate the flavor of the place.

There were many intriguing looking and sounding restaurants in downtown Banff, including a number of Texas-style steakhouses and many Swiss restaurants (including but not limited to fondue). The latter were especially tempting to me because we don't have many Swiss restaurants in the bay area. Sadly, one cannot go to a fondue restaurant alone and I wasn't planning on heading back toward the conference site early enough to find someone and convince them to go out to eat with me (even if I knew who I'd try to convince).

Downtown also had a nice indoor mall with lots of displays commemorating Canadian skiers (such as statues, historical signs, antique skies, and trophies). Not many malls in the U.S. have such character.

At the mall I exchanged what little money I had ($30) in U.S. dollars to Canadian currency. It's amazing that I survived so many days in Canada without doing this. I wanted to convert more currency so I wouldn't have to worry about where I was and how to pay for items at places that didn't accept Visa but none of the ATMs would take my card to withdraw money. This lack of money would come back to haunt me later...

I browsed in the local bookstore, which also reflected local and Canadian tastes and values. It gave me some books to add to my book queue. If one can judge a town by what it reads, this town definitely passes.

After ignoring some small museums, I hiked to the real Bow Falls viewpoint I'd missed yesterday. It was okay: pretty but really just as pretty as everything around Banff -- not exemplary.

By this point I had most of the energy baked out of me. The sun was straight over head all this time, and the temperature was in the 80s. I decided to do the rest of Banff exploration via car, partially for this reason and partially because the rest of the sights were much farther apart.

First on the list was the Cave and Basin, basically a hot spring. It, being a small smelly pool of water, was quite disappointing and certainly not worth the $4 admission. But I did get to watch an interesting short video here about how this hot spring caused the founding of the Banff National Park and the whole Canadian park system in general. It's quite a dramatic tale, with con artists, betrayal, forged signatures, and more.

Then I drove to Cascade Gardens, a small gardens with lots of what-was-meant-to-be streams. (See the pictures for what I mean here.)

The base of the Banff gondola (which goes to the top of Sulphur Mountain) was next. The base had a nice overlook of the river, but I didn't want to pay around $25 just to ride to the top and get to see yet more impressive landscapes. It'd seen enough impressive vistas of Banff and the surrounding countryside that another view didn't excite me. (Besides, I'd apparently ridden this gondola once when I was very young.) I thought briefly about hiking up and riding the gondola down but decided I didn't have the energy for the 3 mile-ish climb uphill. And I didn't have the time if I wanted to fit in more before dinner.

Then came the viewpoint at the bottom of Bow Falls. In addition to the falls -again, nothing impressive- I found a well-hidden restaurant. (See pictures.) What a neat location! (Sadly, I looked up the restaurant later and found it wasn't really any good.)

Finally, I visited the impressive Banff Springs Hotel, a massive mansion of a hotel the railroad built when it realized the Banff railroad stop was growing as a major tourist destination.

And one neat fact: many signs (and all government-erected ones) at all these tourist sights were in both English and French (though I heard a number of other European languages spoken on the streets of Banff).

Dinner was pretty satisfying at the end of the day: a breaded veal cutlet with tomato and melted cheese on top (good), a zucchini patty with sour cream (good), and a tortellini with tomato cream sauce (okay). Later in the evening I grabbed a locally brewed wheat beer from the conference room's refrigerator (only $2 -- a very good deal). It wasn't anything special but it did help accomplish its purpose: to help me relax and go to sleep easier and earlier in preparation for my presentation the following day.