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Published: March 10th 2009
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Banff is a bustling little mountain town that has a good atmosphere. It has remained at a smallish size by introducing a law many years ago not allowing any more houses to be constructed, if you want a new house you must buy one that already exists and bowl it down, even then if you build a new one it must conform to the local style. I think to buy a house you must also work in Banff. So the style of houses remains relatively similar and there is a close knit community. That is until all the flaming Australians turn up in winter and take over the town! It is madness they are everywhere, ha ha. I guess because Australia doesn’t have many good ski fields a lot of them decide to spend a year or more in Banff.
Anyway that’s enough of the Aussie bashing, as we walked into town cyclists were whizzing passed, we found out that they were almost finished a large race. So we found the finish and watched a few rolling in. I think cycling down mountains would be fun, getting up them would be a completely different story. I don’t know how they
could ever enjoy that.
After a look in a few of the many tourist shops that are smattered along the main street, we walked along the river to a small waterfall, on the way we spotted a wood pecker, I’m not sure if his name was Woody or not, he wasn’t wearing his name tag. Above the river is the famous Banff Hotel. It is notorious for being where the movie ‘The Shining’ was filmed that features Jack Nicholson. As we walked around the humongous structure it didn’t seem menacing like the movies. Perhaps in the corridors at night it is a different story.
After a busy morning of sightseeing, food was of the essence, we found a bar and order pub snacks - wings, nachos and the like. As you all probably know tipping is required in Canada. It takes a while to get used too, 15% is usually the norm, and it applies to all services - hair cuts, taxis, being served food and drinks, prostitution - only joking, I don’t know what the case is there. Even if waiters are useless they still expect a tip. I think it’s bullsh*t in some cases, tips stands
for To Insure Prompt Service - I think all waiters should be told this, maybe I’m being harsh seeing as I’m not used to it in NZ and I’ve never relied on tips for a living.
Jenn, Nic and Tina hit the shops in the afternoon. Scott and I hit the Irish pub. Several hours later Scott and I were rather merry. It’s the Irish way. The girls joined us and we had a good old drinking session and a great feed to boot. More than a few bars were visited including my favourite ‘Magpies”. I loved it mainly due to the fact that on the tables there were buckets of peanuts, the ones that you de-shell and then eat. What made it better was that the floors were wooden and you could just throw your shells onto the floor. I think I went a little crazy, there were peanut shells everywhere, and somehow I ended up with a peanut bucket on my head, people were throwing peanuts at the bucket from all over the show, and that includes random people I’d never meet before. It was carnage, but we all loved it. At the end of the night
in all the mayhem we accidentally stole the buckets. We also accidentally ran out of the back entrance. Hope no one from the bar reads this.
The following morning before driving back to Calgary one of the strangest things I’ve ever witnessed occurred. I woke, bleary eyed to see a strange Asian man inside of the camper. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. No, he was real. All of a sudden he clicked and realised he was in the wrong campervan. At this stage Scott had awoken and spotted him. “what the f*ck are you doing in here?” His reply was “ohhh sorry”, “ohhh sorry”, “ohhh sorry”. This phrase of “ohhhh sorry” continued non stop for about two minutes because the Asian guy couldn’t get out. The door was a hold-one-latch, pull another latch job. By the time he finally worked it out I was in hysterics, what a bizarre way to start the day and end our trip!
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