We had a mid-morning flight from Vancouver to Calgary, and since we stayed in the airport last night, it was a leisurely and stress-free trip checking in for our flight! After checking out of the hotel, we pickup our luggage from the bell desk and walked to the domestic check-in, breezed through the formalities and headed to the Maple Leaf Lounge early to have our breakfast.

Upon arrival in Calgary, we picked up our rental van and headed for the mountains. We’ll be spending the next 5 nights at the Fairmont Banff Springs, which has become our go-to place to stay in Banff. We have a favourite room here, which is a nice one-bedroom suite on the 6th floor with views down the valley, that we have booked many times. For a change, we decided to book a suite on the gold floor. We’ve stayed on Fairmont Gold at many other properties, but never at Banff. To be completely honest, I probably wouldn’t bother with that again at Banff. The suite wasn’t any nicer than our ‘usual’ suite, and while it is great having the lounge as a place to eat and relax, I found it too large and busy

The gold lounge at other Fairmont properties has an elegant and cosy feeling to it. Fairmont Gold at Banff takes up the entire 5th floor and half of the 4th, and they even have a second lounge to accommodate the many rooms with access. The lounge itself was very well designed, the food offerings were excellent and the staff were very helpful. It was just too busy, and because of that, and the fact that our suite wasn’t any better than our usual suite, I don’t believe it was worth the premium over the non-Gold suites in the hotel.

We spent the day enjoying Banff and relaxing at the hotel.