Our next stop was an (early) included-in-the-tour buffet lunch at the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre. We arrived at 10:50am and filed into the upstairs restaurant.
The best thing I can say about it is that, as advertised, it was a lunch.
The vast majority of tourists we saw were Asian and while the food selection was not unusual, the flavoring of most dishes was designed to cater to their tastes.
Example: When you put potato salad on your plate you usually know how it will taste, with slight variations. When you then take a bite of that potato salad and find that it has apparently been made with soy sauce and five-spice powder it's unexpected. Not bad, but not the potato salad you were expecting and looking forward to. (Also maybe not what you want to load up your plate with when you know you're looking at a long bus ride for the next couple of days, if you know what I mean.)
I sampled everything but stuck with the fried fish fingers and was fine. Actually, the variety of little desserts were good too. Everything else was kind of strange. Looking at my notes I rated lunch a "Meh."
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| Driving in we passed the Columbia Icefield Skywalk which was included in our tour later in the day |
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| First view of the Athabasca Glacier. The glacier has lost half its volume over the last 125 years resulting in this "moonscape". |
