Banff National Park

Time flies and today we are spending our last day in Banff National Park. We have seen and experienced so many things that we take about 15 minutes each day to reflect on everything.

I think we all agree: Jasper was beautiful and Banff couldn't quite compare ;) maybe because we got soaking wet in just 5 minutes after almost two weeks of sunshine.

The journey to Banff took us through the Icefield Parkway to the Victoria Glacier, which is absolutely worth seeing!!! Like many others, however, in shorts and t-shirt :D, we hiked a small trail towards the glacier and let the damn cold wind blow around our ears. It feels like climbing a completely different landscape in just a few minutes, which fascinated me.

Don't complain about the rain. Think about all the raindrops that are missing you.

Banff reminds me a bit of Las Vegas. You drive for miles through breathtaking landscapes, between mountains, lakes, forests, and glaciers, and suddenly - puff - out of nowhere, there's this city full of tourists, buses, cars, houses, restaurants, shops (loads of :D)... Somewhat surreal and busy but impressive.

If you think that getting up at 5 a.m. in the morning makes you the first, you're mistaken here. The first buses start at 5:30 a.m. to go to the famous lakes, and if you want to get a parking spot, you have to be quick. We were lucky and found a spot at the coveted Lake Louise at 7 a.m. Then we passed countless tourists who wanted to capture THE Instagram picture of the year on an 11km long trail. We didn't think about the fact that this trail is 11km long and that there are grizzly bears... Who needs bear spray when you have a little bear bell with you... which I rang continuously because I was getting a bit nervous in all the fog and drizzle. After about half the distance, we reached the viewpoint, where you would normally get an extraordinary feeling of happiness, but we were unfortunately only plunged into even more fog :D and the happiness was rather far away in a hot chocolate.

So we went back down, a pretty steep, slippery path, which we survived without encountering any bears *haha* a little break in the teahouse warmed us up and eventually the sun appeared and allowed us to see the turquoise blue Lake Louise through the fir trees.

After warming up and resting a bit, we were supposed to go to Lake Moraine. But who would have thought that the road would already be closed due to the many tourists since 8 a.m. and we had to wait until 4 p.m. for them to reopen it. The weather looked quite good and we hoped for some nice postcard pictures. But as soon as we got out of the car, it unexpectedly started pouring, so we were soaked within 3 minutes and it didn't matter how long we stood in the rain. So we fought our way over wooden logs over the water to small islands to at least take a souvenir photo. The logs were super slippery and we could have probably guessed that the idea wasn't so great :D

Too late. Ben slipped and his feet were in Moraine Lake - an experience up close :D

I don't think the giant, wonderful, magnificent rainbow that appeared afterwards could make up for everything :D

Lastly, as if something was missing to make the day perfect, we were surprised by a stranger in Ben's bed at the hostel, who was mistakenly assigned to our 6-person room, which was actually already full. After clearing up the misunderstanding, all 6 of us could go back to our beds and finally sleep :)

Photos will follow