August 25, day 38 in our 6th week – the day on which we had to part began very early in the morning, and it was a morning that began without breakfast for the four of us: Jackie and Peter had offered us to take us to the railway station in their car. We woke up from the alarm ringing at 5:45; shortly before 7 we loaded our luggage into the car, and at 7:10 we arrived at the historic station of Banff. We were among the first travelers to arrive there.

Changing our Jonview vouchers (just printed on small stripes of paper) into regular tickets was done pretty soon – luckily they had two counters there working in parallel -, and also the check-in of our luggage was completed after just a few minutes.

It was quite cold on this morning, and so the complimentary hot tea and coffee that was served was highly appreciated by us and by the other passengers.

Handsome as he was, dressed in a very dashing and decorative uniform, a Mounty was standing on the platform and patiently talking and posturing with hundreds of passengers one after another.

We couldn’t find out if he had any other task or duty, but the picture with Jackie, Peter and ourselves came out pretty well, didn’t it?

Back to topic: Everyone was there, but only the train wasn’t. So it became a long lasting good-bye with lots of tea and coffee as a replacement for a real breakfast. The train was supposed to depart at 8:10, but it was about 8:55 when we caught the first glimpse of the train’s front lights.

I wrote „the train“, but of course it was not just an ordinary train but a very special train: the Rocky Mountaineer. As you will see later on, there are good reasons to call it a luxury train.

We kept on taking pictures until the train halted at the platform. (Stupid thing, isn’t it? But at that very moment we simply had to do that! )

That was at about 9:00. To be honest, we didn’t have time to check what time it was, but the timestamps of the pictures we took do prove what I’m telling.

Well, and then the time had come to say a last „Good bye“ and „Auf Wiedersehen“ and „Thank you so much for everything“. So, let me say once again at this place: A BIG, BIG THANK YOU to both of you, Jackie and Peter, for all the planning and preparing, for showing us so many breath-taking and beautiful places, and of course for driving us safely over several hundreds of kilometers! It was a great pleasure to do this trip together with you!!

Alright: To round up the story I should mention that at about 9:05 we had taken our seats in the train, and a few minutes later the train was set into motion by the two Diesel-driven locomotives, heading to Kamloops and Vancouver.

And it should last until about 10:00 that an excellent breakfast was served.
You can certainly imagine that we were pretty hungry at that time!

What else we experienced on that train will be reported in the next blog post …

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