Location - Canada 'eh

Written two days ago: Location: Kamloops
Kamloops is in Canada. Somewhere between Vancouver and Banff. We’ve spent the day on the Rocky Mountaineer admiring the beautiful views of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We spent yesterday walking the streets of Vancouver, my impression of Vancouver is this, it’s a small community based city hip’d up on caffeine. Seriously we went for a 5 minute walk up a main street and saw no less than 10 coffee shops, half of which were Starbucks or Blenz. There was a Starbucks across the Street from another Starbucks... as I was looking at the first one it took me a minute to realise that I was seeing a reflection of ANOTHER Starbucks. So basically what I’m saying is that Vancouver is my kind of town.
Last night at dinner Ri explained to me that tipping in Canada is actually 15% - minimum. We had a mutual friend who was a waitress in Vancouver who told Ri that the waitresses actually argue over who has to take the Aussie customers as they never tips enough. It’s common practice for the waiting staff to have to put 5% of the meal price into a kitty that is shared, I think this has to come out of the waiters pocket if the traveller fails to tip. SO tip!
The Rocky Mountaineer left Vancouver at 8am this morning and we’ve spent all day on the train. We are divided into two classes, the red leaf and the Gold Leaf passengers. Us red leaf plebs are provided with little red leaf badges to wear, so they can tell the upper class from the lower class. I’m not wearing mine. There is something a little bit wrong about it. It’s already on our ticket! And once you are in your cabin you are not going anywhere. Ri has his on his jeans, under his shirt, which is about as close as Ri comes to disobeying an instruction. I would love this system if we were in Gold Leaf. This is the only thing I can complain about when it comes to our trip on the Rocky Mountaineer. So far it’s been amazing. I think I took about 300 photos today. I don’t know how I’ll choose one to go along with this blog!

Location: Vancouver
It’s our last night in Western Canada, we are off to NYC tomorrow (!!), and we’ve had an amazing time over the last five days. On our second day on the Rocky Mountaineer we saw a Ground Squirrel, a Black Bear and wait for it... a Grizzly Bear. A massive Grizzly just walking along a neighbouring rail line. It goes by so fast that I only managed to get a photo of the back of the black bears head. Oh he was cute. After our second day on the train we spent the night in Banff, I love Banff, it’s so cute. A real mountain town.
From Banff we caught the bus to Lake Louise, where we stayed at the Fairmont Chateau. This was the Honeymoon-y-ist part of our honeymoon on this ‘leg’ of the honeymoon. We could see the lake, which is currently partially frozen, from our window. We ordered room service, went for a stroll in the snow around the lake and had dinner at a ‘four diamond’ restaurant, where I tried about 5 red wines and ate so much that I felt ill. But it was so GOOD. Photos are required! As I’m too tired to keep writing about how amazing it was. Oh but I will say as we checked out I met Sonny the Executive of Pet Relations (a beautiful Labrador- ahhh cute).
We are off to New York tomorrow. Blog again soon.

Blogger is being difficult with images, so I'm only uploading one: The view from our suite at the Chateau....