Picture Post! : Central Canada Trip - Ottawa

Our third and final stop was to Ottawa for 4 nights! I was all prepped and ready to skate on the Rideau Canal (having packed my skates in my suitcase the whole trip!), eat a Beaver Tail, and take in the Nation's Capital with my sweetie-pie! My head cold had also almost completely resolved, so I was excited when the train pulled into the station.

the Peace Tower and Parliament on the far left  and the Rideau canal and locks in front of us.

The Library of Parliament. When Parliament library burnt to a crisp a hundred years ago, some smart staffer closed the doors to the library and it was the only thig left standing!

Statue of former PM Lester Pearson. We liked that he was chillin out in a sturdy desk chair.

View from the bridge from Gatineau Québec looking towards Ottawa. The Peace tower and the giant Canadian flag are in the middle!

War memorial across the street from Parliament

we took the elevator up the Peace Tower - that's Gatinau across the bridge!

We took a tour of parliament, too! fancy! (we took the tour the day after we'd already been in the viewer's gallery for question period, which was quite fun!

The Seat of Government. Too bad  the weather was consistently grey while we were there...

...grey and much warmer than Montréal. The Canal was closed to skating. I was sad.

So we went to the Museum of Civilization instead. Exhibit in the kids' area about world transportation.  It's a Thai Tuk tuk!

I managed to find a car in the Robert Munsch Exhibit! The map on the car shows vancouver, but Guelph - both my and Munsch's hometown - was in large, bold letters! yay!

Old-timey school exhibit. School wasn't thrilling at the turn of the century, either. Although, I did hear a teenage girl say "man, I wish we had seats like this now - these ones are sooo much more comfortable." I have my doubts.

We also spotted a statue that we've all seen many times before! Michael played "match-up" wonderfully!

Winterlude was also running while we were there...though with the warmer weather the ice-sculpures didn't fair well...

I liked to imagine what they looked like originally...like ancient, worm down statues!

Me, on the Rideau locks!

And I visited my aunt while we were in town! It was great to see her, and we took her out one night for Mexican and a pitcher of Sangria! woo-eee! (she's also an expert knitter and therefore one of my personal heroes!)

 And that was that! We had a great time out East, though we've both decided that Ottawa and Montréal might be better visited in Summer (unless we were to come back to skate the canal). Honestly, after being sick for most of the trip I was happy to come home to my own bed and a familiar bathroom. Plus, our shoes were quite salty from the eastern road management tactics. All-in-all...fun!