Banff is situated in the Bow River Valley, surrounded by snow capped mountains on all sides. It's a bit bigger than Jasper and a lot more commercialised. Jasper is still dominated by its railway - The Canadian National. Banff was pretty much built because of its railway -The Canadian Pacific. Indeed, there's a massive and extremely grand looking hotel on the edge of the town that built by the railway specifically to bring visitors and their money to the area. These days Banff doesn't have a proper (VIA Rail) passenger service, only a summer only tourist train called The Rocky Mountaineer. Freight trains regularly pass through, without stopping.
Having gone on a fifteen minute detour round some pretty extensive road works to cross the main road in the centre of Banff and reach the tourist information office I came out armed with maps and lists of things to do and tourist traps to avoid for the day.
I started off by taking the cable car up to the top of one of the montains, then visited the hot springs, walked along the river to a viewing point, sat in the park and enjoyed a 'Peanut Budder and Chocolate' ice cream (in a chocolate cone) and stolled up to the extremely picturesque Bow Falls. I'm just going to let the photos tell you what all that was like.
My flight home leaves Calgary at 18:40MT tomorrow and I'll be back in London at 10:30BST on Sunday so I'll have another day in Calgary. Which reminds me. We haven't had a picture of Calgary yet...
