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kitchen_kink[Finally getting back to this...I'm not sure why I feel that there should be an online travelogue for this trip, but I do, so I'm copying/adapting much of it from my paper journal. Does my sharing of these experiences make them more real?]
Tuesday found everyone very tired and lazy, and we all farted around the house except for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ert, who kept running in and out of the house to tend to his iBook, which had died the previous day, and N---, who was on his last day and went skiing alone.
The rest of us ate a leisurely breakfast enhanced by much cholesterol, a prominent feature of the meals on this trip as a whole, and at some point someone decided to play Seafarers of Catan, a variant on Settlers which I'd never played.
I lost.
Painfully, miserably, slowly. I lost. It stopped being fun and got sort of frustrating. I think I screamed at someone at some point.
Later, though, we decided to go to the hot springs after picking up N---. We drove around madly trying to figure out from which hotel bar N--- was hailing us with his walkie-talkie in one hand, a martini in the other. (One of these martinis apparently ended up shattered on the floor of whichever hotel bar it may have been, due to some wild gesticulations as N--- explained to a cute patron how the walkie-talkie worked.)
We found him at a castle-like structure, flushed and happy, partly from a good day on the slopes and partly from being somewhat baked. We drove off to Banff Hot Springs, at the base of that same Sulphur Mountain I'd failed to climb the day before.
It's no Harbin, to be sure, but then I'm not at all sure that anything is. But the pool is big and surrounded by high walls that keep the heat in, and you can see the mountains in the near distance. You have to wear bathing suits, but that's fine: Harbin is a place of meditation and prayer, and people know how to respect each others' nudity, for the most part. The crowd Banff gets seems just a trifle different: less free love and more American Express.
After a good soak we climbed out and changed, and the whole party headed to downtown Banff, where we found a sushi place with a train. If you've never experienced this, you should: a horseshoe-shaped bar with a kitchen at the open end surrounds a single preparer, who works furiously at a counter. He swiftly assembles amazingly fresh maki and sashimi and nigiri, puts it on little plates of various colors, and sets the plates on the flat cars of an electric train, which makes its way lazily around the horseshoe and through the kitchen. You take what you want and pay by the color and number of plates.
The sushi was spectacular and made us all high and light for the rest of the night. (The sake helped.) We walked the streets of Banff, got pictures taken in front of a store called Pika Village (everyone except me had lived at an MIT co-op called pika), then moved on out.
All in all, a decadent day, and we rested in preparation for Wednesday's exertions.
Tuesday found everyone very tired and lazy, and we all farted around the house except for
ert, who kept running in and out of the house to tend to his iBook, which had died the previous day, and N---, who was on his last day and went skiing alone.The rest of us ate a leisurely breakfast enhanced by much cholesterol, a prominent feature of the meals on this trip as a whole, and at some point someone decided to play Seafarers of Catan, a variant on Settlers which I'd never played.
I lost.
Painfully, miserably, slowly. I lost. It stopped being fun and got sort of frustrating. I think I screamed at someone at some point.
Later, though, we decided to go to the hot springs after picking up N---. We drove around madly trying to figure out from which hotel bar N--- was hailing us with his walkie-talkie in one hand, a martini in the other. (One of these martinis apparently ended up shattered on the floor of whichever hotel bar it may have been, due to some wild gesticulations as N--- explained to a cute patron how the walkie-talkie worked.)
We found him at a castle-like structure, flushed and happy, partly from a good day on the slopes and partly from being somewhat baked. We drove off to Banff Hot Springs, at the base of that same Sulphur Mountain I'd failed to climb the day before.
It's no Harbin, to be sure, but then I'm not at all sure that anything is. But the pool is big and surrounded by high walls that keep the heat in, and you can see the mountains in the near distance. You have to wear bathing suits, but that's fine: Harbin is a place of meditation and prayer, and people know how to respect each others' nudity, for the most part. The crowd Banff gets seems just a trifle different: less free love and more American Express.
After a good soak we climbed out and changed, and the whole party headed to downtown Banff, where we found a sushi place with a train. If you've never experienced this, you should: a horseshoe-shaped bar with a kitchen at the open end surrounds a single preparer, who works furiously at a counter. He swiftly assembles amazingly fresh maki and sashimi and nigiri, puts it on little plates of various colors, and sets the plates on the flat cars of an electric train, which makes its way lazily around the horseshoe and through the kitchen. You take what you want and pay by the color and number of plates.
The sushi was spectacular and made us all high and light for the rest of the night. (The sake helped.) We walked the streets of Banff, got pictures taken in front of a store called Pika Village (everyone except me had lived at an MIT co-op called pika), then moved on out.
All in all, a decadent day, and we rested in preparation for Wednesday's exertions.
