Banff is a really beautiful little town---the scenery there is incredibly gorgeous and breathtaking, no doubt about that. We got in on Thursday evening, just enough time to lose ourselves in the massive Fairmont Banff Springs hotel and get a full fondue dinner at the Grizzly House...yummy. In addition to the cheese fondue, we cooked ourselves up some prawns, scallops, lobster, beef, buffalo, elk & venison on a hot granite block. What a Canadian meal, eh? This place was quite interesting--there were little phones at every table...and you could call up another table. Talk about a pick-up joint. Friday was my spa day, which was way too self-indulgent for words. This was the first time I've ever done anything of the sort: a turkish scrub, massage, facial, spa lunch, soak in a Hungarian mineral pool, manicure & pedicure. Whew. On Saturday, we hit the slopes of Sunshine Village for our half day....god, it was gorgeous. We were lucky as it was super sunny and the visibility was 100%. There are 3 mountains at Sunshine: Goat Mountain, Lookout & Mt Standish. Since it was just a half day, we expected to just stay on one mountain all day....but, much to our disappoint, this mountain wasn't as big as we expected and we hit all 3 in the 4 hours we were there. As Pierre put it: "it's like a big, beautiful Snoqualmie". The runs were incredibly short (like, 5-10 minutes) and many areas were very flat, making it not that fun for snowboarders. Definitely a skiers' mountain. Any spots of powder lasted for about 5 seconds. And the black diamonds were a joke---at one point, we went through the "Bye Bye Bowl"...afterwards, Pierre was like "what bowl?" But--to give it some credit: it's a GORGEOUS mountain. The view from there is just incredible...and it was a really relaxing, beautiful day to just be up in the mountains. It was definitely worth going just for the views. All in all, it was a great, short, relaxing trip. Some friends are heading up to Whistler in two weeks...can't wait for that!



Got an interesting email from a friend: "Lift your right foot and start making circles with it clock-wise. Then take your right hand and start drawing a six. Your foot will start going the other way, no matter how hard you try"



What happened in Madrid is so horrible. I remember going to Atocha a few times while I was there...it's such a beautiful station, right across from the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, a very cool museum that housed a painting that I wrote a paper on. Sri & I have been talking for the last few months about going to Madrid this spring....I still want to go. I miss that city.