Banff

Banff is a place born of wonder: it sits inside Canada’s oldest national park, wrapped in the vast limestone walls of the Rockies that look as if they were carved by giants. But its real beauty is not only in the height of the jagged peaks — it is in where they meet the water: clear glacial water in a deep, impossible turquoise, as if someone had poured luminous paint into it; these lakes, like Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, are the quiet, mesmerising counterpoint to the menacing wildness of the rock around them. A holiday in Banff is a constant dialogue between these two forces of nature, and the way you choose to experience them will shape your entire memory of the trip. On one side is the historic, aristocratic experience of staying in the heart of the mountain: waking inside “the Castle in the Rockies” — those dramatic, historic hotels built in the nineteenth century, surrounded by dense pine forests and running streams, where the morning mist rises straight from your room window toward the distant peaks; a place where you feel small before creation, wrapped in classic alpine design and dark wood, with the roar of a waterfall echoing in the background. On the other side is the chance to lay your head right on the glacial waterline: waking to the absolute quiet of Lake Louise in the early hours, before the first hiker arrives, seeing the snow-capped mountains reflected perfectly on the still water, drinking hot coffee at a huge glass window looking onto the slowly melting glacier, and knowing that Canada’s purest, most untouched nature is one step from your balcony. At SherryStay we understand that Banff is a journey of deep sensory wonder: we have sifted out the generic roadside hotels and picked only the places to stay that hold the most perfect piece of the view — the places where you can open the window and feel that you are not just looking at the Canadian Rockies, but living inside them.

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