A Day In Calgary

Every womens dream when they 1st open their eyes in the morning!
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Despite the hotel bed being very comfy and the late night, Andy woke up around 7.30am. He remembered John saying that they showed Premiership football on saturday mornings, so raced to put the TV on (with Meg's permission!) To his delight it was on so first he watched Arsenal vs M'Boro (1-1) then at 10.30am the Man Utd vs Spurs game was on so he was in his elemant! Meg used the time to ring home and speak to her family. We had to check out by 12pm so Andy didn't see the last 25 mins :( but Utd were winning 1-0 so he was not too unhappy. After checking out we went to a couple of outdoor stores to look for walking shoes/boots for us both. The 2nd store on McLeod Trail (thats a street name!) was really good and after about 1hr of umming and arrhing we got a pair each. Both in th sale of course! We then drove the 15mins into the city centre where we parked (only $2 for the weekend 6am-6pm!) on 9th St SW and walked around the central part of the city, mainly following a foot route shown in the local guide and some red foot prints on the pavement. We did deviate from the guide and walked across a pedestrian/cycle bridge over the Bow River to Princes Island Park which was a nice area which lots of people were enjoying. We walked around the waterside where some people were having their wedding pictures taken and then across another bridge back to the city area. We had a look around some shops in the Eau Claire market before walking through Chinatown which was quite small. To complete the loop we walked through the pedestrian Streets of Stephen Av and grabbed a chicken chow mein each which we sat and ate in the truck. By now it was around 6pm so we left the city of Clagary and got on to the Trans Canada highway heading east. Calgary was ok as cities go, not the worst at all but not a particularly memorable place. We reached Banff National Park and stopped off in Canmore to look at the 3 sisters mountain. We wanted to stay here as it looked nice and there were some hikes to do but all the B&B's were full. We didn't see any signs for a hostel but later found out that there was one there! We drove through the town of Banff and continued on highway 1. We could see lots of dark clouds in front of us and when we got near Castle it began raining quite hard. It was about 8.15pm and with the weather we decided to go back to the hostel in Castle where luckily Tony said he had a room for us, initially Meg in the famale dorm and Andy on the sofa in the lounge as the mens was full! Andy wasn't too pleased so Tony allowed us both to stay together in one of the private rooms in the hostel which Tony doesn't like people to use, think he's old fashioned Christian. We sat talking talking to Baptiste, a young swiss lad who was there when we were last and a German guy for an hour or so (Andy liked it as the German is a football fan - Byan Munich - 99 and all that!) Wrote a bit of journal and read in the room before going to sleep.