Guitar-a-licios

Tuesday afternoon, Stuart and I left work early and drove out to Banff. We got a room at the Bow Valley Lodge and had a little nap before walking over to The Bison. This is a slow-food, local ingredients restaurant along the same lines as The Quarry in Canmore. The food was fantastic! We started with in-house marinated olives, fresh multigrain bread and Shrimp & Crab mini tacos. I had the Grilled Bison Striploin, that was served with goat cheese stuffed philo, wilted spinach and baked onions, squash, baby tomatoes and califlower. It was all in a red wine reduction that was really yummy. Stuart had the special, which was Leg of Bison, with a different assortment of veggies, but I have to assume it was good, because he stopped using words and just made "mmmmm" noises. We shared a White Chocolate Creme Brulee which was interesting because it was chilled as opposed to warm, but still "lick out the bowl" amazing.

We left in just enough time to head up the hill to the Banff Arts Center and get a parking spot half-way down the other side. The show for Jesse Cook was sold out, but we did see a few empty spots in the theater. It didn't matter though, as the show was amazing. Lots of good stories and reparte, and of course - phenomenal guitar playing. As an added bonus, his wife came out in the second set and danced to a couple of numbers. She's a professional flamenco dancer and wow! does she have moves. The drummer deserves mention, as we all agreed that he must have a separate brain for each limb - I'm sure in one song that each arm was going on a different time signature. There was another band member who played drums, accordian and violin, then blew us all away by singing "Fall at Your Feet" in the second intermission.

All in all, yet another "once in a lifetime" concert at the Eric Harvey theater.

We slept in very late on Wednesday, getting up just in time to pack up and check out. We had another yummy meal at the Wild Flour Bakery - I highly recommend the grilled sandwiches and the baking! Then we went up for a long, quiet, uncrowded! soak in the hot springs before reluctantly climbing into the car to head back home for our second photography class. It was a really nice, if far too short, little holiday.

And, to top it all off, we finally have more puppy pictures! (Just of the males, for some reason though. Doesn't matter too much - they are all super-cute!)