As a European soccer fan my Canada Day started with a trip to the bar, watching the final between Spain and Italy. Banff was already packed with tourists and so were all the bars at 12.45pm. Honestly it ended up with me leaving the bar 30 minutes before the game ended, so I could watch it at home with my roommates, who were as excited about the game as me, instead of the Canada Day hype. As much as we love our Canadian friends they had to wait until after our soccer game.
After
the game ended at 2ish a few of my cool housemates and I went downtown to get a
feeling of the Canada Day fuzz. Banff Ave was PACKED or worse than that, you
couldn’t get one way or the other. We were on the lookout for a watergun, so we
visited all the toystores and the dollarstore, where we finally found a cool
super-soaker (which later on showed that it definitely didn’t “supersoak”
anything but our balcony floor), but we found a watergun and got it.
It was time for our next project of the day,
get a good spot for the parade, that started at 5pm. Banff Ave was already
closed down for traffic, and we were thinking that an hour before the parade
even started we could be lucky to find a patio spot at either the Elk and
Oarsman or the Brew Pub. We got a pretty good window spot at the Elk and
Oarsman, and got ourselves a huge plate of nachos to kill the time with. The Elk
and Oarsman have some pretty good nachos by the way, and you can get a plate
big enough to share! (Also try $8 Steak Tuesdays) When we finished we decided
to try our luck and find a better spot on the ground, so that we could watch
the parade closeup.
As you can see on the pictures Banff
Ave was packed all the way from Cascade Plaza to the river, and we didn’t get a
great spot, but we could at least see what wast going on. Looking back, we
should probably have skipped the nachos and just been standing on the street
for hours like all the tourists to get one of those front row spots. But the
Parade was amazing it was an hour show with all kinds of marching bands and
small weird breaks, like Auroras’ (local Banff night club) foam party float.
Yea, I am pretty sure if you like me, have never seen a real American parade
before you’re going to be amazed as well. 
Since Canada was the same date as my
birthday – Danish time – my lovely housemates and few of my old Banff friends
had a little come together at our balcony to have some pre-drinks before the
BIG fireworks show. A couple of drinks are necessary for a good Canada Day I
would say. And we were super lucky with the weather for once (Banff Summers can
vary with the weather from beautiful sunny days to short powerful rain storms),
but great weather got the streets filled with happy Canadians dressed up in red
and white tattooed with maple leafs all over their bodies. And generally you
can just feel the festive mood that everyone is in this day also if you’re not
Canadian. I for sure had a great Canada Day here in Banff. You should
definitely stick around for Canada Day, if you don’t have anything better to do
after your winter season.
