Capital City
Trip Start
Apr 29, 2005
1
8
25
Trip End
Aug 18, 2005
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Arrived in Ottawa the next day and headed for tourist info and then to a motel on the outskirts of town. Possibly the worst one yet, bright green lairy 70s bathroom , cream bricked walls inside, dodgy carpet and the worst smell of damp ever. To top it off Fabien the motel owner was very strange and rang at 7.30 am on a Sunday morning to check if we had been disturbed by the noise the previous night. We hadn`t but the phone call at 7.30 am definitely disturbed us!
On Sunday we headed downtown to Parliament Hill. We took a tour of the House of Parliament, with a very enthusiastic tour guide , who seemed very pleased to have a Queen of Canada. Anyway we followed this tour with one of the Supreme Court- very interesting for me but perhaps less so for the others! We checked out the national archives for Kate to arrange to pick up her documents and then walked along the river separating Quebec and Ontario to the National Gallery where we spent a couple of hours wandering the galleries. At the moment it is the tulip festival in Ottawa, so there are lots of events in the city and beautiful floral displays of tulips everywhere.Its essentially a festival commemorating the Canadian liberation of the Netherlands in the second world war.
Later that day Armelle and Becca visited the Cathedral and relaxed in an Irish pub, while kate and i attempted to make it to the museum of Civilisation. After discovering it was far to far to walk we headed to the nearest pub where we ordered perhaps the worst drink i have ever tasted. After requesting a shandy, the waitress promptly brought back our "shondy`s" which were lager and lemon juice!
On Monday we all split off and did our own thing, I sat in on a supreme court case about Aborignial children`s right to education and in the house of commons where two French Mps just ended up yelling at each other. kate and Armelle worked in the archives and Becca worked in the library. There was also a very exciting protest outside Parlimaent, with literally hundreds of tractors blocking the roads. Ontario farmers were protesting about U.S tariffs and the low prices for their crops.
Ottawa has been fun, very different to the other cities so far, with the atmosphere and architecture but a worth while visit. Next stop is Montreal, so we better get practicing our french.
Au Revoir
Laura xxx
