Last bit of our journey

Hi,

So finally the story of the last few days of our trip from last year. It took a while but now it's finally all here :-)


Left at Thursday September 3rd. Our last full day in Vancouver. One thing we hadn't done yet, was going to Granville Island and English Bay. We had a nice walk alongside False Creek, enjoying the views. Then taking the Aquabus across to Granville Island to see the big public market. Always nice to see although it was filled with tourists. So after just a short stroll we went back across the water to downtown again to continue our walk towards English Bay. This walk is always so funny in the sense that it almost seems like you're not in a city anymore. Seeing the beach! and in the distance the mountains. I guess just one of the main reasons this city is in the top 3 of best places to live in the world!

After a lot of walking and of course taking dozens of pictures finally decided to walk into town. We had lunch plans at the Vancouver Art Gallery, meeting Maria one more time. Yay! So nice to see her one more time before leaving again. And of course enjoying the patio at the Gallery. We even had a major rain shower but luckily we were sitting underneath a parasol that kept us sort of dry...

After all these impressions it was enough for us and we just did some window-shopping on the way back to Yaletown. Packing for the last trip of the entire journey.
Friday we took the skytrain back to the airport. This time for a national flight :-) To Calgary! Just a quick hop over the Rocky Mountains and 1 hour later we had arrived. I had rented a car already so we just went to go pick it up.. seems easy enough you'd think. First time: we got some sports car that was uncomfortable to sit in and you could you nothing through the tiny windows.. so I went back to ask for a different car. Good, they had a VW Golf. Much better for me. Went to the car again: no navigation! Back again... of course there were problems in the system etc etc. But finally after nearly 45 minutes we were ready to drive into the Rocky Mountains!
So nice to finally be driving this myself. Big open roads. We had some traffic jam on the way up there. But the nice surprise was that we had missed the fact that the navigation system had a 1 hour time difference.. so luckily it was not as far as I thought! haha. Just about 1.5 hours to Banff I think it was. Nice! Found the hotel easy enough. It was a little bit sad that even though it was early September, it was just about 3 degrees celsius (low forties F) and low hanging clouds.. But of course we went into town to find a nice place to eat. Ended up in a Irish pub :-) Bring on the pies!
We also did some shopping as it was much colder than we anticipated. Bought a hat and some warm sweatpants. Much better!

Saturday after a nice breakfast we went to the tourist shop to find out about the ticket to the National Park. We had to get one as I wanted to go to Lake Louise. And we did! Even though it was raining it was still a beautiful sight. I finally got to see it without ice on it! haha. We also drove up to Moraine Lake. As this is even higher up in the mountains, it was only 1 degree Celsius! brrr and it started to snow a little bit (wet snow). We couldn't see much at the lake. But still it was quite the experience. I'm still happy I got to take my dad here. Hopefully someday I'll get to see it in all its glory in the sun.. who knows.
Another nice dinner this time at a Italian place in a hotel close to our own hotel. And just relaxing. And now fully pack everything! As Sunday was the day we went back home...
At least the clouds were a bit higher on Sunday so we could see some of the mountains play peek-a-boo between them. Went one more time into town to Starbucks and just enjoy the scenery one more time. Then a nice and calm drive back to Calgary from where we flew back home!

It was an amazing journey and extra fun as I got to show my dad all these things and meet my friends in US & Canada.

Till next time! who knows where the journey will go to then...