Speaking of the Safeway, it always surprises me when I go to a town and can't find gluten free food. After all, we were in a tourist town and gluten free food was pretty scarce. In retrospect, Calgary was a coeliac heaven - we did find a good organic supermarket, right by a light rail station, that stocked a good range of GF foods, including corn thins and a local GF bakery's products (GF/DF pumpkin pie! Oh it was YUMMY! I shall never see its likes again, alas!). An organic bakery had what they called "gluten free" brownies but when I asked, they said "oh, no, we can't guarantee they are gluten free!" So why call them gluten free? Low gluten is truer! We did have a good meal at the Rose and Crown pub - they did what I call pub food. They are one of the many eateries that are upstairs and are accessed by a set of doors and lots of stairs - hole in the wall type doors. The Safeway did not have a good range of GF foods. Indeed it had hardly any that I could find.
Enough crabbing. Banff was pretty, just not coeliac friendly.
(I am also terribly surprised that NOONE was using the bike rack by Bow Falls! Those are the rapids above Bow Falls in the pic below.)
(And NOONE was using the picnic tables. Like DOOOOOODS, it was only -17C, what are you, a pack of wusses? (If I wrote nancies, would anyone spank me?) Just cos your butts would freeze off if you sat on the snowy seats.... The odd crow/raven might steal your food cos they will be hungry too!)
But Banff was not about food. Banff was about cold and walking EVERYWHERE. Y'see they advertised a bus service that went past the youth hostel. The bus ran every 40 minutes. So after our meal the first night, we waited at the bus stop. We made sure that we had the right change, and then we saw the bus turn right one street before it reached the stop we were waiting at. We were confuzzled by this, and cranky cos it was cold and dark and we Had Had Enough. The map said the bus went past our stop.
(I am very cold in this shot - I don't have a nice lined tuque yet)
Turns out that we had the NEW new map. The bus had not been going along the main street as it had been closed due to extremely icy conditions. We had the map/timetable that was correct for the day after we left, not the current timetable. It made for crankiness as the walk was reasonably long and up a steady hill.
We never did manage to catch the bus.
It didn't run past these places:
Why do people like houses that are EXACTLY the same as the house next door? I must just prize individuality more than most (though you can find 20 of our house in our neighbourhood Back 'Ome, but at least the houses around ours are not the same as ours).
But jeez we saw a lot of prettiness.
(Cascade Mountain)
Lots of pretties!
(Mt Rundle)
Even more pretties!
(Mt Rundle)
More pretties than you can poke a stick at! Or maybe a hoodoo at
Pretties all round!
(up the river)
(down the river)
Too many pretties?
NEVER!
Some old railway hotel for you - the famous Banff Springs?
And from afar, on the road to the hoodoo gurus!
(The funny thing is that you think the hotel is up the hillside a fair way but really? It is in the valley!)
It has a great view along part of the Bow Valley - what a fabulous, ground out valley it is too!
How's this for a snow plough?
Looks just like the prow of a ship, for a similar reason, but it really is attached to this:
But alas, all good things must come to an end, so we moved on to LAKE LOUISE!
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