Christmas Dinner at the Banff Springs Hotel

Saturday, 26^th December 2015

Continuation of Christmas Day:

Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel

One of the lobbies and one of the Christmas trees

A huge gingerbread hotel

Looking out over the ice rink

The buffet hall

Children's dessert buffet

Make-up before eating

Ironman joined us for dinner

Our corner of the dining room

Les, Jack and David

Our dining room Christmas tree

A snowman ice sculpture

Dave and Shan

The marshmallow chef

The vibraphone musician

Part of a balcony

Will Jack's jellies survive?

Ooooh, yum!!!

A decoration

Ironman morphed into a pirate

Jack was also in the swing

Snowman - or should that be a PC Snowperson?

Balcony and ice rink

Fire hydrant

Our Christmas Dinner celebrations were at the Banff Springs Fairmont Hotel – the fairytale castle on top of the hill.  David drove to the main entrance to drop us off before parking the car and then discovered that short term valet parking was on offer.  The decision was a no-brainer!  Along with all the other guests, we walked through the hotel dressed in our big boots, coats and hats, taking in the magnificent decorations and décor on the way to our dining hall.  A cloak room was provided at the entrance to the hall, we were escorted through the buffet, past a huge gingerbread house and shown to our table in a beautifully decorated dining room.  There was even a separate children’s buffet for the little guests, complete with complimentary face painting.  This was a far as Aidan got!  His face had to be painted before he even thought about food.  Jack had been promised free visits to the dessert bars as long as he had some vegetables first – it didn’t take long to finish the healthy course!  His favourite dessert was the green jelly and managed to consume eleven before discovering the chocolate fountain!

The buffet was just superb; on offer was seafood (oysters, prawns, salmon, etc), Italian, Chinese, Indian, traditional roasts (and the most enormous hip of beef) and vegetables, salads, cheeses, cold meats, breads (including muffins and gingerbread men), the dessert bar (decisions, decisions), the two chocolate fountains with marshmallows and fruit, the Haagen Das ice cream bar (complete with all the toppings imaginable) and a lady toasting marshmallows, of course.  To compliment the buffet, we were treated to a lovely lady playing Christmas carols and songs on a vibraphone.  The service was splendid and we were looked after so well.

We looked out over a balcony, which included an ice skating rink, towards the mountains – only it was too dark to see them.  We did do a quick tour of the balcony before we left and the boys had a slide around the ice wearing their normal boots, but with the temperature hovering around the -19 degrees, it was too cold to stay outside for very long.

Two very tired boys didn’t take as long to fall asleep on Christmas night!

Today is Boxing Day – and time to hit the sales.  We discovered that Banff has Boxing Day Sales.  We decided to do our own things this morning, with Dave and Co booking ski lessons, buying Shan another pair of boots and hitting the toboggan slopes again; we decided on a bit more retail therapy (along with 10,327 other tourists, mainly Australians) and to exchange my Christmas hat.  It didn’t take long to turn the hat into a cashmere sweater.  We enjoyed our stroll to and from downtown Banff, with clear, blue skies and no wind.  We must be starting to look like locals, as a lady from Calgary stopped her car and asked up how to get to Safeway.

There are a few strange sights among the tourists; the strangest was probably the older bloke wearing shorts but there are a few teenage female tourists who seem to think fashion and bare skin is more important than warmth.  The majority of people are dressed very similar to us – warm jackets and pants, hats, mittens, scarves and boots.  This does create a bit of a problem inside the house, which is set at 22 degrees, and the dress of the day is usually thermal underwear with something over the top to cover the lumps and bumps.