Fantastic Western Canada

Gillian Steele on 05 September 2010
To celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary my Husband & I decided to travel to Canada & Alaska. The Canadian part of the holiday was done as part of a coach group.

We arrived in Calgary and transferred to Banff for a 3 nights stay. Banff is a lovely small town in the Rocky Mountains & we found it very safe to walk around whether at night or during the day - the only thing to watch out for is bears, luckily we never saw any close up! However we did come across deer one morning before we went for breakfast.

We had a wander round Banff and surrounding areas – we managed to walk up to the Fairmont Banff Spring Hotel for a look around & then up to the Hot Springs for a relaxing half hour in the warm waters. Whilst in Banff we visited Lake Louise which is a stunning area with a fantastic Chateau Hotel on the lakeside, the Lake is the most beautiful bluey/green I've ever seen. The whole Rocky Mountain area we visited was very scenic & dramatic.

From Banff we travelled to Vancouver via Kamloops (with a 1 night stay), this was a long journey but again lovely scenery on the way with many stops of interest.

Arriving into Vancouver was a bit of a shock as we had just encountered lovely towns & villages on the way & arrived into a city with high sky scrapers, our hotel was called the 4*Marriott Pinnacle Hotel. The Hotel was very well positioned for walking to different parts of the city. We enjoyed walking along the seafront to Stanley Park which was about an hours walk away but once there you felt as though you were in the country rather than a big city.

We really liked Vancouver & would class it as 1 of our favourite cities in the world.

From our base in Vancouver we visited various other places including Grouse Mountain & the Capilano Suspension Bridge (which is a place to avoid if you don’t like heights!). Whilst in the area we went to Vancouver Island this was a ferry journey from the mainland which in itself was enjoyable. On our way to Victoria (the capital) we visited Butchart Gardens & even though I’m not a gardener I really loved this place. It was beautiful & the colours of the flowers were amazing. We then proceeded to Victoria which again is another beautiful city and is very safe to walk around. It has lovely buildings and a gorgeous harbour where we wandered and saw many street entertainers.

All in all Canada was brilliant & can’t wait to go back!