I've missed out Thursday and Friday's blogs as we didn't do a whole lot.

One hostel, 16 nights, approx 6-7 separate bookings, 4 rooms and 12 room mates later it's time to check out of the HI-Banff Alpine!!

We were catching another night bus so we stored our bags in the hostel and headed into town for one last wander. Despite Banff being such a small town there were still shops we hadn't been into. They actually had shops dedicated to two of my favourite things- Tea! and Christmas! :) We popped into 'The Spirit Of Christmas' shop first which is on 3 levels and is just full of different decorations and everything else you would need for Christmas. As soon as I walked in the smell and the lights and the colours made me feel really festive. Part of me felt sad because I won't be at home this year- I've never spent Christmas away from home or away from my family, and I always decorate the tree! :) Another part of me was excited to be spending it in New York!! which I've been told is THE place to spend Christmas!

Next we came across 'The Banff Tea Co.' which first began at one of the tea houses in Lake Louise. It was a lovely little store. I never realised there were so many different varieties of tea! and the lady was so knowledgeable about them all too.

There were sniffer pots for each one and it was only $2.00 for a cup to take away so we began sniffing! I was torn between a few but in the end I went for a cup of Caramel Apple Rooibos. It was lovely, really fruity at first with a lovely sweet smooth after taste. They are online and they ship all over so I will definitely be looking them up when I get back.

We grabbed McDonalds for lunch as we knew we had an overnight journey and it normally fills us both up for hours, but for once it didn't! We headed back to the hostel as we still had a couple of hours spare so we had tea and cake and then chilled out on the sofas until it was time to leave.

We caught the 7.43pm bus into town and the Greyhound was due to leave at 9.05pm.

As it isn't a proper depot/station and as Banff is so small, the building wasn't open. It was absolutely freezing tonight and the bus was late so we were stood outside in the freezing cold for about an hour and a half! The bus was so rickety aswell- I don't know if it was the roads or the bus itself! I was just dropping off when almost 2 hours had passed and we had arrived in Calgary. We had to get off and wait there for an hour and a half for our 2nd bus to Edmonton which was leaving at 00.30am. At least we were inside though. We got on the bus to Edmonton at 00.30am and that was going to take around 5 hours. Once in Edmonton we had another hour's wait (again luckily we were inside) and then at 6.30am we boarded our final bus to Jasper which would also take around 5 hours.