Legendary Lake Louise

Lake Louise is one of the heart of beautiful place in Banff National Park, within UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's right behind The historic Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise at 111 Lake Louise Drive, Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada T0L 1E0, which is popular for tourism. It was raining and windy when we arrived there, it was quite cold. Our tour leader suggested us to take a buffet lunch cost US$50/person in the one of the hotel restaurants in order to explore the hotel.


Going down from the bus, the tour leader brought us to the lobby, explaining about hotel areas. The chandelier in the lobby was very nice, describing ladies bringing lamps which were in the history the woman brought the lamp behind the windows to show the way home to her husband. He showed us the "Poppy" restaurant location for lunch, there was 1.5 hours before lunch time, so we were free to go around the hotel and exploring the lake.

He brought us the the backyard, while he explained about the lake, we prefered to take picture and enjoy the scenery as it's very attempting looking from the window. We walked fast to the lake, taking pictures in front of a majestic lake, surrounded by snow Rocky mountain peaks and Victoria glacier right at the middle of the background.

Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise

The iconic chateau also had a very beautiful garden full of flower, you could take beautiful pictures from many angles. Some wooden benches were available for people to enjoy the scenery, unfortunately we could not sit there as it's wet because of the rain. There was a unique flower called Poppy which only grows in that place, it's a pity I didn't take any picture of the flower as I'd just realized after leaving the chateau when checking internet.

As the rain getting harder, my younger sister decided to go back inside the hotel as her coat didn't have any head cover, we didn't bring any umbrella, while 3 of us continue taking some pictures at the edge of the lake. As we didn't have much time to go around the lake and it's still raining, we didn't stroll along the lake, just walking for a short distance. The lake water was very cold when we tried to touch it.

We decided to go inside the hotel as my younger sister as our coat became wet and the weather was colder. We walked exploring the spacious hotel interior with wooden stairs and railing, also some arches on the aisle of the stores selling various merchandize, post office, etc.

We sat on the couch enjoy the marvelous vista of lake and mountain through elegant big glass Palladian windows in the Lakeview Lounge. All rooms and interior inside the hotel were maintained as the original one. In the middle of a hall there was a lady playing harpa wearing traditional clothes, if you're interested to her music, you could buy the CDs.

An hour lunch time in Poppy Brasserie restaurant was not too impresive. The food taste was not too special, although there was a small live music band entertaining the guests. It was so crowded with guests, only available a few seat next to the window, those had been occupied by the guests who could come earlier than us. The service was not too good, we had to serve ourselves even we had to wait quite a long time to have a clean spoon or fork.

Only around 40 minutes spent for eating we hurried to decide to go to the lake again as the rain had stopped, the sun shone so bright, unfortunately we didn't have much time to go to the edge of the lake, as we had to go to the bus soon. During winter season, you could play ski on the frozen lake.