We never get an upgrade

It’s that time of year again … the birthday vacation. It has been almost six months since the last big vacation. You can’t really count the trip to Florida since it was only a couple of days. We wanted to go somewhere where we could use our Aeroplan miles. After much investigation, we settled on flying to Calgary and then driving to Vancouver to visit our dear friends Darren and Allison and their soon to be one year old twin daughters Shayla and Sienna.

Lucky for us, Karen’s brother Ross and his wife Susie live about ten minutes from the Toronto Pearson International Airport and they were kind enough to let us stay overnight and drop us at the airport for our 6:30am flight. We left the house around 5:00am and I would say that it took us in total about twenty minutes to drop of our bags, go through security (thanks NEXUS) and get breakfast before getting to our gate. Our flight is with Air Canada. It cost us 50,000 Aeroplan miles and $165.53CAD/person. We were very lucky that it was not a full flight and therefore we each got our own row and were able to stretch out and catch up on our sleep that we did not get last night.

We arrived in Calgary around 9am, picked up our bags and our Dodge Avenger from Hertz ($347.67 CAD) and started our trip to Banff. We did make one stop in Calgary and that was at Jelly Modern Doughnuts. We saw an episode of You Gotta Eat Here! and just had to try the doughnuts. We picked up maple bacon, valhrona chocolate, red velvet and nenshi’s salted carmel doughtnuts. I would have to say that the maple bacon was my favorite.

It took us about one and a half hours to get to Banff. We decided that we would head to the hotel first, the Banff Caribou Lodge & Spa ($119 CAD) to check in. I waited in the car while Karen went into the hotel. After a few minutes she came out with a big grin. Unfortunately the hotel was overbooked. They asked if we would mind going to their sister property called The Fox Hotel & Suites. Karen said that would be fine since we were going to be given loft suite worth $479 CAD/night. Yippee … We have never gotten an upgrade. We arrived at the hotel and were greeted with a beautiful suite.

We dropped our bags and went out to find some lunch. The front desk clerk recommended Wild Flour Bakery. Once we got there we knew the place must have been good because of the line up. Karen went with the turkey wrap and I had the pulled pork. It was raining pretty good when we finished lunch, so we thought let’s do some shopping and maybe the rain will stop before we go sight seeing. I can not believe how much good shopping there is in Banff. After walking around most of downtown Banff, the rain had not let up. So we just decided to make nice with the rain and head out to go sightseeing.

We took the Banff Gondola to the top of Sulphur Mountain. As we climbed up the mountain, the rain changed to snow and the temperature dropped. We were not able to see much of anything but it was very quiet and peaceful. We actually climbed to the observation deck and all we could see were lots and lots of clouds. We descended down the mountain and head back to the car to do some touring around. We stopped at surprise corner and got a lovely view of The Fairmont Banff Springs from across the Bow River.

We were getting tired and it was dinner time so we stopped at Bumpers The Beef House and enjoyed some fine Alberta beef. We wanted to get back to the hotel to enjoy the grotto style hot pool. Our bodies thanked us for the soaking.

I am writing this at 9:30pm and the sun has not set yet. If we were not so tired, we would be hitting the town but I think it is time for bed.