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At around $900 a night for some suites - $1600-plus for the presidential ensemble and its personal glass-sided elevators - plus $20 for any pets, the Banff Springs Hotel may be way out of your league, but you can't spend much time in town without coming across at least one mention of the place, and it's hard to miss its landmark Gothic superstructure. Initiated in 1888, it got off to a bad start, when the architect arrived to find the place being built 180 degrees out of kilter: while the kitchens enjoyed magnificent views over the river the guestrooms looked blankly into thick forest. When it finally opened, with 250 rooms and a rotunda to improve the views, it was the world's largest hotel. The thinking behind the project was summed up by William Cornelius Van Horne, the larger-than-life vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, who said of the Rockies, "if we can't export the scenery we'll import the tourists". One of the best ways to make the railway pay, he decided, was to sell people the idea of superb scenery and provide a series of jumbo hotels from which to enjoy it: the Banff Springs was the result, soon followed by similar railway-backed accommodation at Lake Louise and Yoho's Emerald Lake. Horne was also the man who, when he discovered the Banff Springs was being built back to front, pulled out a piece of paper and quickly sketched a veranda affair, which he decided would put things to rights: he was no architect, but such was his overbearing managerial style that his ad hoc creation was built anyway. Today the 828-room luxury pile, largely rebuilt between 1911 and 1928, costs around $90,000 a day just to run, but boasts an extraordinary 100 percent occupancy - or over 1700 guests nightly - for half of the year. Busloads of Japanese visitors help make ends meet - the hotel's appearance in a famous Japanese soap having apparently boosted its already rampant popularity. The influx has prompted further rebuilding, including a spa centre being talked of as one of North America's best and a ballroom for 1600 people. The "Building of Banff" trips depart daily at 5pm from the main lobby and cost $5 if you are interested: call 762-2211 for further details. Unless you're a fan of kilted hotel staff or Victorian hotel architecture and its allied knick-knacks you can easily give the organized tours a miss. A voyeuristic hour or so can be spent looking around the hotel's first three floors on your own (pick up a map in reception, it's almost a mini-village) or taking a coffee, beer or afternoon tea in the second-floor cafe and Sunroom off the main reception; prices for anything else in most of the sixteen various eating places are ludicrous. It's also worth walking out onto the terrace beyond the Sunroom for some truly spectacular views. You can get out here either by walking along the south bank of the Bow River (taking in Bow Falls) or picking up the Banff Transit bus from downtown ($1). Walking up or down Spray Avenue is very dull
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