Christmas Eve

---

Hello everyone. We hope you had a great Christmas and boxing day and are enjoying a relaxing break. We have been extra busy during our time in the Rocky Mountains and haven't had time to update the blog. We will break the days into its own blog starting with this blog for the 24th December. There has also been a train derailment in Banff which has cut the phone lines to Lake Louise which has stopped us from updating the blog.
Christmas EveWe woke up excited after our dinner and walk home in the snow. Again when we looked out the window we were hit with the beauty of the mountains. Everywhere you looked there was a snow peaked mountain lurking over the town. We started with breaks and planned our day; gondola ride, hot springs and a walk around Banff Main Street. We found the bus stop after a short search and waited with an Irish chap who was to happy to remind us that Ireland had recently beaten Australia in the rugby union and that they were now the 3rd ranked team in the world. He was also proud that an Irishman was the captain of the English cricket team. At the gondola we would ride a small carriage about 8 minutes to the top of Sulphur Mountain. The trip up was amazing as we kept rising we could begin to see further into the distance. We were very lucky to have a clear day. At the top the view was spectacular. We will let the pictures do the talking. We spent about half hour at the top of the mountain before we got too cold, so naturally we decided to go for a swim. Just down the hill from the gondola was the sulphur heated pools, it was still a man made pool with very hot water. Our swim was very refreshing as it revived our nearly frozen toes and finger tips. It was also very nice sitting there with the amazing backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. After our refreshing swim we headed to down town Banff to go for s walk and wait for our bus to Lake Louise. Here we ran into a group of Aussie ladies traveling with their adult daughters. We began talking over an inappropriate joke where the lady was happy another Aussie heard and understood her 'Aussie humour'. We chatted to the lady for about 15 minutes which was nice touching base with some other Aussies. However, after spending more time around Banff and Lake Louise we realised there are more Aussies than Canadians around. Our trip to Lake Louise took about 40 minutes where we had a nice nap. We were surprised to discover just how small it was. There is a small shopping centre with about 5 shops and that's it apart from the resorts. We walked to Ash and Richie's where we would be spending Christmas Eve. We headed to a nice pub for dinner and had a good catch up with Ash before heading back and meeting their room mates and fiends. Ash blew up our bed for the night, with the hair drier and some help from Richie. We headed of to bed excited for our White Christmas the following day.

---