Lake Louise 1
Feb 17th (Sun)
After having breakfast at our hotel, we left Calgary for Lake Louise / Banff. It was a long weekend and everywhere was crowded!
We drove through a nice wintery landscape and entered the Rocky Mountains. If you are only passing through, no cost, but if you are staying for sightseeing, you need to pay the National Park entrance fee.
A group of between two and seven people traveling in a single vehicle pays C$19.60 for a day’s pass. We planned to stay for 4 nights, so it will cost about $100. Quite expensive…
Then the receptionist told us that it’s $136.40 for an annual park pass which is valid in 27 of Canada’s national parks. So we decided to get an annual pass. This year we will have a BB, but my parents are planning to visit us to Canada (their first time traveling abroad!). So we can use it at that time as well. More details and fees.
If you don’t want to pay for this entrance fee, there is a way to do it. You can stay at Canmore, which is out of the national park, but it’s only 10 minutes away from Banff. It’s a smaller town, but it has a lot to offer for leisure and nice restaurants. We did so last year, and we had a good time in Canmore. My diary on Canmore 1 and Canmore 2 (sorry only in Japanese).
On the way to Lake Louise, we dropped by at Banff for lunch and browsing. But it was really cold and snowing. It was difficult to get out of the mall once inside. Banff has a lot of nice Canadian souvenir shops that we don’t have in Edmonton. So I did some souvenir shopping.
It’s Wolf Street. There are other animal name streets here. It’s fun.
When we were leaving Banff, the sun was coming out… yes, it’s mountain weather. It changes very quickly.
Arrived in Lake Louise.
We had 4 nights at Chateau Lake Louise. Probably the last trip before having our BB. We got some discount because we are Alberta residents. You should check if you live in Alberta!
It’s a very nice hotel, so we enjoyed it a lot. The frozen lake was right in front of us. Very different scenery and leisure from summer time.
This is the landscape from our window. They are all skating rinks. The front left is for games, the front right is for fun and the small ones behind are for pond hockey tournaments.
The mountain in the middle, which is covered by cloud and snow, is the Victoria glacier. It’s getting smaller every year because of global warming.
Valentine’s treats that my hubby had ordered in advance! Nice surprise. Thank you, David!!
An excitable lady here.
A great coffee machine! Decaf was of course there.
Night time:
It was a long weekend and the hotel and restaurants were packed! We had dinner at a bar & restaurant inside the hotel.
I was only coughing before, but by this time, my nose started to run… I have to take care of myself really…
Maternity Wear
I couldn’t fit into any more of my trousers since more than 1 month ago. I wear stretchable trousers at home, so no problem, but I don’t have many choice of clothes when I go out.
So we went out to get some new stuff.
Some women who have many fashionable and practical items don’t seem to be bothered about buying “maternity clothes” and wear stretchable skirts, dresses or tunics that cover not only the tummy but also the butt. But when I look around my closet, there are not many items like that at all. So we went to buy some, but it’s difficult to decide how many I would need, as I don’t know what type of body I’m going to have after giving birth.
My bras also got a little too tight and a clerk at the shop took my measurement. The bottom had no change. Good! But the widest got 2 sizes bigger! I heard that the bust will be bigger, but I wasn’t expecting this much. Anyway, looking ahead I guessed that I would use them for more than 1 year, so I bought 2 new bigger bras. I also got a nice loose dress and a pants with a stretchable waist.
I think jeans might be quite tight and could prevent blood circulation so I don’t want to wear them, but it looks like women love jeans. These shops below had many kinds of pairs (of course they have the stretchy waists like above). Breasts and tummies get bigger, so maybe they want to show off skinny legs, I guess?
There are 2 shops that specialize in maternity clothes in WEM (West Edmonton Mall) :
And also
– but the section for maternity wear was quite small.
If you think it’s a waste to buy clothes just for the period that you are pregnant, you have other choices to look for some that are wearable for both times. If the clothes can cover your tummy comfortably with stretchables or pleats, that would do.
At one of my recent favorite shops, Anthropologie, and we got one nice dress with pleats for me. This shop is not cheap, so I had to make sure that I can still wear it even after my pregnancy.
By the way, the mall was very dry. After spending 3 hours in the mall, our lips got rough, and as I took my sweater off and on many times for fitting, my hair got really fluffy with static electricity even though I had on some hair product. My eyes got red as well…
Maternity shopping… quite boring for my hubby but he patiently waited for me. Thanks!
Usually I wait for him at book stores and CD shops. So even-steven?
Snowflakes
This morning, it was -12 c degrees and snowing, so I went out and took some photos.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a macro lens, but I took photos with the biggest resolution possible and cropped them.
There are really beautiful arts of nature.
It’s the 22nd week of my pregnancy now and I feel the BB moving. She seems she’s awake when I’m up and she’s in sleep when I’m in sleep. I’d like to apologize to her for the shocks and noises of my coughs… Finally, I’m better.
I bought this dress a long time ago. But I realized or someone told me that this dress make me look pregnant. I think I wore it once or so, and then kept it to wait until I get pregnant. I think I’ve been keeping this dress for a decade…
OK, now I’m pregnant and my belly is big. It’s time!
Oh no! It’s already too tight around my belly! It’s not a stretchy kind of material and it’s uncomfortable. When am I going to wear this?
Google AdSense
I heard the top (5%) Google AdSense earners are getting about $300/month or more.
I also have its ad on the bottom-right of this blog, and I only earn about $100/year… hahaha so little. But it’s still nice to get some allowance in my pocket once a year.
To earn that much you not only need to write many high-quality articles but also do so with the theme of your specific blog. But that’s not what I want to do. More variety of topics are better to include in my life. So no specific themes. My blog wasn’t made to earn cash from Google AdSense. (Too bad…)
The keywords that bring visitors to my blog those are Tim Hortons, Vitamix, Aska, travels (specific destinations), music (specific artists), and recently words related to pregnancy. I can write more on these topics (I just don’t have enough time), so I will try!
Originally I just wanted to write my life down for my record and to show it to my family, and to say what I want to say. So it’s my easy-going journal.
If you tell visitors to click the ads, or click the ads yourself, it sounds like you’ll get a big penalty from Google, so be careful if you are thinking of starting this service.
Digital Box
Now our TV channels have been reduced to about 20 from about 50!
Shaw TV reduced the number of channels. If we still want to continue watching what we had before, we need to pay money for an update. That’s what they say.
From a few moths ago we had a warning message on the TV screen. So I asked my landlord if we needed to worry about losing anything. He said if we want to watch more channels with better quality, we, the tenant, can personally buy a digital box to install to our TV to watch. Otherwise, we can ignore the message. We didn’t want more channels for an extra fee, but wanted to simply keep what we had. So we ignored it. But about a week ago, a half of the channels were gone! CNN and BBC are also gone!! As a result, now we watch Canadian news more…
The landlord was a bit wrong and we had to loose half. He suggested watching CNN on the internet.
According to him, it cost $118 to buy a Digital Box, and is possible to install it by ourselves. Rental is also possible with a contract of 3 years or longer, which costs $4/month. x 3 years = $150.
We are anyway planning to move. So we’ll just do without those channels for a while and watch them online.
Sounds like satellite and the Telus TV continue to give the same number of channels!
Only Shaws….
For details:
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/digital-conversion-causing-shaw-confusion-1.689935
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