October 11th - 14th - Banff

Hey there, I'm back again!

Recovered from my midterms and the party afterwards, I finally found the time to write a new post.
I would like to tell you about another amazing weekend in Banff! For anyone who doesn't know what Banff is (I didn't know either): it's a Canadian city in Alberta surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. And for those of you who don't know the Rocky Mountains, don't worry I took some pictures for you.
We, that means Gloria, Pauline, Tash and me, started our journey on Friday afternoon in a Chrysler 200.

Yes, I really liked this car.

I think we drove around 9 hours and I figured out that Canadian highways are predestined for ignoring speed limits as long as you can't see any police.
Unfortunetaly I don't have any picture of it, but it the middle of the night when we were already close to Banff we saw two bears at the sides of the road! Well, except for Pauline. Poor Pauline...
I think we arrived around 3am at the hostel and this caused us to oversleep our breakfast. So the first mission of the day was to find something to eat. We succeeded and I took some first pictures of the city and it's surrounding.

 After that we took the car and travelled around Banff without a map or anything. That's another nice thing about this place: on the one hand you can't really get lost, since there are so few streets and on the other hand it doesn't matter where you go, because the landscape is breathtaking anyway.

Still appreciate it.

After this short stop we travelled to a lake (sorry, forgot the name) and took a walk.

After we had seen enough we went back to the car and stopped at the next station. No plans -> no time limits -> no hurry! :)

This is Gloria walking through the woods. In the next pictures you would see her fighting with a bear but unfortunetaly there are some copyright issues with the bear's family, so you have to imagine the scene.
After a relaxed walk we returned to Banff, got some gas and headed to the west. We stopped at some kind of canyon but it was kinda crowded.

After this we returned to Banff and went to a pub to enjoy a tasteful burger and played some cards at our hostel.
For Sunday we had planned a trip to Lake Louise where we wanted to do the "Six Glaciers Hike". A really good decision! Highly recommended!
I will just post lots of pictures for you but even while taking these I knew that they would never really catch the whole scenery.

 Down there you can see the girls. I wanted to go higher and higher...

 with zoom

 without zoom

 Tash followed and took these pictures of me. On the way down we went even more crazy and climbed down the rocks instead of passing them. Doesn't look that dangarous but it actually was (and so much fun!).
On our way back to the lake the weather got even better and we could enjoy the sun.

There are so many more pictures, since Gloria and Tash also took pictures, and I hope these photos give you already a reason to travel to Canada :)
Hope you enjoyed!