Back from our retreat

Normally, it's Darlene that manages to get all the great hotel deals, but this time I managed to score a winner. This trip to Banff was a surprise for Darlene. It started out with me signing up for the Fairmont President's Club. Yeah - I know what you're thinking - another damned hotel club. I thought the same thing, until they offered me a special rate of $129 a night for a deluxe room, breakfast included. So I booked us for 2 nights (which we just got back from). Even though we told them in advance to expect us around 1pm, our room was not ready on arrival. Before I forget, being in the President's Club also means getting your own (shorter) line. Our room was still not ready 90 minutes later, when they'd told us to come back. So we were upgraded to a room over by the conference centre (seen in picture). Being over there makes getting to the main hotel attractions a bit of a walk, but it also means peace and quiet - and it means being real close to the parking garage - bonus!

When we got to our room, there was a chilled bottle of champagne waiting for us - on the house. If we had bought this stuff from the room service menu, it would have cost $65. Then we had our complimentary breakfast buffet - value of $60 after gratuities and taxes. You know where I'm going with this, right? With all the freebies they threw in, we basically paid $70 (plus levies, and assorted taxes) for the room for both nights.

So was it worth it? Absolutely. The Banff Springs is not an ultramodern hotel. But what it lacks in high tech toys it makes up for in service and amenities. We loved the outdoor heated pool - they even had a bunch of foam floaty tubes to play around with. The water was 100F and we had snowflakes falling on our faces - what a great time. The breakfasts were pretty decent too. All in all, it was a nice escape for a couple of days and Darlene says we must go back next year.

I'll be putting select pics in my Flickr page as time permits, so check back after a few days.