12th DaY iN caNADA

it was a very tense and hard day.

in my travelling plan, i would get up a little bit earlier and leave my hotel at Banff heading to Calgary. i had to return my rental car before noon and take aeroplane at 17:15 to Vancouver. i know i would feel stressed because of the timeline, but i'd thought that thing would go fine as as my previous experience. the truth is -- no, not smoothly at all!

the frist thing was filling up petrol. there seemed some problem at the counter so that everyone was queued for quite a long time. and then, when i was trying to set the destination on my GPS navigation, the big problem appeared -- it asked for PIN code! i didnt know any pin code at all. i'd got the gps workable without asked for input any pin code since i rented it. i tried several default pin code like 0000 or 1234, it's just not working! i started to worry that i was running out of my time and still didnt know how to go to Calgary. I recalled that there was a Avis store in Banff's downtown, not far away from me, so i drove there and thought i could ask then about the pin code. what?! it had opened yet? oh my god! its almost 9:30 am. ok, another way i could try was calling directly to Avis in calgary! yeah, as every drama's plot could have happened, no one answered my phone call. i gave up! i started to read the maps and taught my mom, who doesnt really understand english and maps, to become my assistant pilot.

eveything looked ok when i was driving along the highway. Calgary was 158km away from banff.   but not entering the calgary city centre was a mess! really dont know how to describe the situation i encountered when i had to driving in high speed (because i hadnt got off the highway i think. the exit sign wasnt really clear to me) and deciding which way i should follow (there were so many direction signs appeared which were not shown on my map of course!). Plus, my panic mom. we were lucky enough that every turn we made was correct! soon or late we drove in the right way that was shown clearly enough on our map. and another lucky thing was a petrol station showed up! (Because i had just missed some when i was still in a mess.) hu~what a big relief was! i was really not sure if i could drive in the correct ways again.

However, i hadn't known i would face to a big problem. i'd been informed that the original store where i picked up the car would have been moving to a new place. the new place actually is a landmark of Calgary, the calgary tower, so i thought it would be fine to return my car. but i just couldnt figure out which parkade was the right one. there are so many parkades around Calgary tower and the traffic was not good enough to let me hanging around. i was forced by the urgent situation, it was already around 11:30 am, to park shortly in 30-min parking zone and ran into the office for help! gosh! what a long line to the frontdesk. i couldnt wait for long so i cut in for quick enquiry. i paid the parking fee at the machine (again, this was my first time to use it! i was in such a hurry...~"~) and soon tried to follow the staff's "unclear" help to find the parkade. as everyone could imagine, i failed again. so i just did what i'd done once again -- temporarily stopped, asked for clearer instruction, and drove away. this time i'd got no time to hesitate and drove directly to a parkade which was no sign of Avis and was not like a parkade for rental car at all, i even i had to take a parking ticket at the entrance! Fortunately again, i was right and the staff was right. anyway, i made it and brought our 2 big suitcases with my mom to the office. ya i felt so relieved after returned the car, even i was queued in line for 20 minutes at the frontdesk. What a tense and hard time is.

i didnt feel hungry totally due to this journey. my mom and i grabbed some food and took the bus to airport. everything had become better. we arrived at airport smoothly and got good latte. my plane took us to Vancouver and a cab took us to the hotel. therefore, i am happy to stay in this nice hotel!