Quick history lesson about the Canadian National Parks, Railways, and the Grand Railroad Hotels (all now part of the Fairmont chain). Those of you that enjoy in-depth histories, dates, facts-Wikipedia is your friend. For my purposes, I will try to be brief. America took a page out of Canada’s National Park system. Our Canadian neighbor’s system was well established long before Yellowstone became the first NP…complete with moving the indigenous peoples off the better lands. Canada saw the commercialization of the rich national resources coming…and the potential to spoil/ruin the Natural beauty in an effort to obtain these resources for profit. In the late 1800’s Canada began creating areas and rules under their National Park system. The rail system had been established to move both resources and people through these areas. By the 1920-30, tourism was taking hold. People wanted to see these places. Various raIl systems built a network of grand hotels across Canada. Eventually, this collection morphed into the Fairmont chain. During the last 100 years the National Parks are much more focused on preservation of resources and limiting commercial developments within. So, these grand old hotel have almost a monopoly on hotel space within the national parks. While there are some highway systems in and around the parks, they are two lane affairs, not a lot of services-cell, gas, food or otherwise. The railroad is often the only link through the system. Fast forward, the Rocky Mountaineer has capitalize both the nostalgia of train travel, and seeing these truly majestic sights without spoiling the untouched quality of the system. Oooh, aah, trains, exclusive, grand old hotels…this has Eddie/Captain Powder Puff/Joker written all over if. End of history lesson….please, no fact check…looking at you, Batman.
The Jasper Fairmont is a hotel built along the lines of the some of our early National Parks with stone, high beam ceiling and huge fireplaces. The park over the years has expanded to include a huge network of bungalows, cottages or Estate properties that are nestled along side the picturesque mountains and a lake. Imagine our total surprise when Batman/Robin and Catwoman/Joker were handed the keys to one of the Estate cabins, probably 2,000 square feet of space, two separate bedrooms, three baths, huge living/dining/kitchen room complete with high ceilings windows and fireplace. HolyCow, Batman. This Bat Cave is some pretty nice digs. We thought had won the ultimate upgrade lottery. A random check on the various hotel websites within the Fairmont NP system said that rack rate for just a simple king room within the hotel ranged from $400-1250 a night…two nights in this will so totally make up for Kamloops. One other little detail they don’t share in the glossy brochure from RM, while your breakfast and lunch on train days is included, you are own your own for all other meals, and you are virtually a hostage to the Fairmont way of life…read $50 CAD breakfasts and triple that for burgers and beer.
Batman was in charge of dinner reservations. Batman and Catwoman determined that with heaving feedings on The train, we would eat at the bar on first night of our stays then in one of the better restaurants on site for the second. At the Jasper Fairmont it was Orso. Not really paying attention to the menu when booking, we figured it was Italian based on the description. This is not Olive Garden Italian- come to find out when we sat down for dinner. Apparently, the chef is a Michelin star wanna be…the menu was pretentious at best and down right weird if you get right down to it. Sitting there reviewing the menu, Robin could not find something that struck her fancy. We all actually were jonesing for a big plate of comfort food…with garlic bread and a glass of red wine. Nope. Boys got venison loin, I had fish, and Robin had the lobster tortellini-substitute roasted vegetable for the cauliflower trio. Robin envisioned the tortellini to be perfect pockets of tender lobster bathed in a butter sauce. Nope,it was ink squid black Al dente tortellini with lobster, carefully crafted Parmesan cheese fans fashioned like sea fans. Instead of a butter sauce, the menu referred to a vanilla foam…imagine our surprise when her plate had two four inch high blooms of bubbles. Not foam, but bubbles like the kind we made when we took bubble baths and made bubble beards. Yeah, wish I had whipped out my phone…her face was priceless. Kinda like dinner, a true Master Card moment….but we had the room. Guess they knew they would make up for the loss on the room rate with what was spent in restaurants. Come to think about it—-wonder if their computers match high-end advance restaurant reservations with the upgrade list, makes you wonder. Oh yeah, they do not charge extra for the four female elks that were in the front yard of our cottage for breakfast time…yes, we did get pictures of this….will there be a charge on my bill for that?
No comments:
Post a Comment