the morning on this day was rainy, cloudy, gray, and cold. so we decided to stay in bed, to get a little extra rest after the last few strenuous days. also it was a good opportunity to do the laundry again (as the hotel had laundry and dryer machines in the basement), sort out hundreds of megabytes of pictures, update the bLog and all the rest one does when the weather is not that promising. while changing bills for coins at the reception the guy told me that the weather here in banff has been like this for over three weeks - rainy, cloudy, no sunshine. uh-oh... well, so far we have been really lucky with the weather and could not complain. also we were quite happy about the little break we got today. but just as we had brought rain to the dried out regions in the west, we brought sunshine to alberta, because in the afternoon the sun came out. yippieh, lucky us. so, we went out to explore the city of banff and sights nearby, such as the bow falls[003-010], that are right in the center of banff. if you started your canada trip in the west and came to banff now like we did, this is not really what you would call a fall, after all you have seen so far. but a little further down the river we got to get a beautiful view. in the meantime it started to heavily rain again, so we decided to walk up to the banff springs hotel[002,012-028]. once there, it had stopped to rain again - strange weather. the hotel reminded me a little bit of the hotel in "the shining", but way more busy and crowded and no snow. still the stone walls were quite beautiful, and the view on the mountains was also wonderful. still, we were not yet used to those masses of people, so we went for another trail nearby, namely the fenland trail[029-069]. beside one japanese woman who crossed our way, asking if there is an exit for this trail, we were alone. since she came from the same direction as we did, we could not answer her question. the trail led through lush green meadows and awesome forests, and followed the river for most parts. the water was, as usual, of wonderful colour and pureness, with little bugs[053-055] and fishes in it. then we drove on to the vermillion lakes[070-133], a series of lakes right next to the highway, from which we had already seen them the day we came to banff. and although right next to the highway, it was very quiet and calm, and there was traffic noise only once in a while. by now the sky was clear again, and almost no wind, so again perfect conditions for taking pictures. we had wonderful reflections, easy access to the lakes, as they all were right next to the small road going from one lake to the next, and only a few people, most of them photographers looking for the same things as we did. all of them looked pretty happy with what they caught on camera, and so were we. sceneries like taken from a traveller catalogue or a glossy magazine. but as always, no picture can capture the real beauty there was. once the sun has started to set, it got too dark for any more pictures without a tripod, and as we had already arrived at the last lake and thus the end of the street, we decided to call it a day, and drive back to banff. shopping food in banff turned out to be tremendously expensive again, but this did not surprise us anymore. also we ran out of cash and could not find an ATM nearby or in the shop, so we reduced our groceries to a minimum. thus we had cup noodles this evening, also for the lack of motivation to search a decent restaurant. track for day 18.