Up bright and early for the 300km or so drive to Calgary for our flight to Montreal. Tim didn’t sleep so well last night, too much afternoon napping and maybe going to the gym late didn’t help so he had a sleep for most of the trip, don’t worry, Sam driving! We use the self check-in machines (there is no other option here) and it prints everything, boarding passes and baggage tags. All we then have to do is take our luggage to the counter and hand it over - they don’t even weight it, if only we knew! We decide to hire a car when we get to Montreal as we have some down time there and I think it will be really exciting to explore as Quebec’s supposed to be such an old traditional ... read more

Woke up looking forward to another awesome day in Canada - we are white water rafting the Kicking Horse route and then going to Lake Louise to stay at the famous Fairmont Chateau, the hotel that is always used in the postcards. So we got up early (6am, way too early for Tim) to check out of our hotel and then drive to the rafting place. Because it was so early we had a really good run (so much for the roadworks holding us up as and could have slept in for another hour - sorry Tim! Went to the very exotic McDonalds for breaky on the run, I think it was too early for the guy working there too, because he was none too please when I asked for a Bacon and Egg McMuffin minus ... read more

We had breakfast in the restaurant next door to the hotel. All the waitresses were Aussies, but not the friendly type unfortunately, at least not to fellow Aussies. Walked around town up and down the main street in the morning, lots and lots and lots of souvenier shops. Went hunting for a beanie for me because it’s not exactly warm and I’m a pussy as you all know when it’s less than 35 degrees! Easier said than done because of my pin head, there are heaps of really cool kids animal beanies though, so I have loads of fun trying them all on! Drove to Columbian Icefields to see the glaciers, or more precisely the Athabasca Ice Glacier. The drive is, as we have now come to expect, like driving through a postcard. Beautiful mountains, with ... read more

After breakfast we caught the train to Calgary’s tiny little skytower. It looked so much bigger in the pictures… But back when it was built it would’ve been the tallest thing around, unfortunately technology and engineering took over and compared the buildings around it, it is kind of dwarfed in perspective. But regardless of it’s lack of height we still had an incredible view of Calgary. It is such a beautiful green city. There was also a glass floor which looked pretty neat looking straight down. Had lunch at cool restaurant, really high ceilings. Looked old world but felt modern. It was called Br & (cool way of saying Brand…) We caught the train and then a bus to pick up our hire car from airport - look out Canada! They upgraded us to a Volvo ... read more

In the morning we were picked up at 6:15am. You would think that because we didn’t have to have breakfast, nothing to pack because we were only there one night and we didn’t even have to take our luggage out of the room that we would have plenty of time, but no, it was still a little early for some in our room so in the end we had to race out room to get on our bus. Fortunately we weren’t the last on the bus! Today we were the first seating for breakfast and lunch - so no scone! Again we were going through a postcard, incredible country! We went past through Kicking Horse River where we will be rafting. We saw a lot of people rafting but we weren’t sure what colour rafts our ... read more