I believe the last entry left off describing our arrival in Ottawa and our stay at the Travelodge. Well, the accommodations and the pool at the hotel was a big hit, but the food wasn't. We had two meals, a dinner and a buffet-style breakfast, and both left us with that queasy feeling in our stomachs. We thought we give the breakfast a try and perhaps allow the hotel to redeem themselves from the dinner that took over an hour to cook (it was a burger and chicken parmesan). What a mistake! The pancakes tasted a day old, even Liam wouldn't eat them, and he loves pancakes! The eggs tasted bland, and the fried potatoes were all shriveled up and really overcooked. To the TL's defense, we did arrive near the end of the buffet and there didn't seem to be too many people that had eaten, so there wasn't likely any turnover of the food. Anyway, hotel = B+, food = F.
We had big plans for Ottawa that realistically needed a week to complete. We heard about the awful parking situation in downtown Ottawa, but shrugged it off thinking that surely we'd find a spot, after all, we had unhooked the trailer and should be able to park with ease. Downtown Ottawa is a pure nightmare for parking. I thought Calgary was bad, at least Calgary has about 50 more available parking lots, Ottawa I think had about 5 near the Parliament building and I couldn't seem to locate 4 of them. That's where Vince parking came in. He (the attendant, his name may have been Vince) gladly saw us pull in and probably notice the glowing B.C. plates on the truck. He (we'll call him Vince) gladly charged us $25 for parking 3 1/2 hours because we were "oversized". Now, our vehicle was bigger than any of the cars that were in the lot, but $25 for 3 hours? Anyway, we bit the bullet because I didn't want to drive in downtown Ottawa any longer as the one-way streets were driving me nuts. In comparison, Calgary's streets seem like 5 lane highways when compared to Ottawa's narrow two and three lane routes.
Our goal was to see the Parliament building, the Chateau Laurier, the Museum of Civilization, the Church of Notre-Dame, and if we could fit it in, the Aircraft Museum. Well, we arrived downtown in mid-afternoon and only got to the Parliament building and the Chateau Laurier. The Parliament was quite interesting, very picturesque, and there was an hint of importance and duty in the air. Of course, you see your typical protester dressed up in a seal suit with a sign around his neck saying "Love me, don't club me"...but that gets swallowed up by the history and mystique of the setting. One note, the Parliament isn't very wheelchair accessible...which is seen when trying to get a stroller up the thirty front steps. We had to skirt around to the side and skirt around a limited amount of traffic to get the stroller up. After going through security which is tighter than airport security (they made me take my belt off), we were off to the see the inner bowels of where all the important decisions are made . We went to the near top of the Peace tower, walked through another type of war memorial, and sat in on Parliament's "Question Period". My personal goal for Ottawa was simply to sit in on a session of Parliament, and even though my goal was only fulfilled for 5 minutes, it was awesome. After going through more security and the confiscation of our cameras, coats, phones, etc...we all stepped in (remember, we have a 3 year old and a near 4 month old...this is no small feat) and enjoyed people yelling at one another for five minutes. We saw all the usual suspects, Harper, Duceppe, Ignatiff...but I didn't see Layton, he might have been taking a union break. The sentry at the door then gave us a tip that the session would be over in mere minutes and the exit would get very busy! Liam was sitting so nicely and I would have loved to let him stay, but we shuffled him out of there without much notice (he actually liked it and wanted to stay). After leaving the session, we walked around the grounds a bit more and off to the Chateau Laurier. The Chateau Laurier is a Fairmont hotel, formerly a CP hotel and part of the chain of railway hotels that dot major cities across Canada. Shan and I were married at the Palliser hotel in Calgary, so we always like to see the different chain of hotels when we visit the cities that house them. The hotel was fairly grand, but I still thought some of the western hotels in the chain were nicer.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to our other destinations, but we did take the scenic drive through Ottawa down by the river. We drove by 24 Sussex drive, the home of the Prime Minister, and some other fancy homes occupied by the Governor General, and probably the leader of the opposition. Ottawa is truly a beautiful city, and if I had to choose a big city to live in (Ottawa has 900,000 people), I would choose Ottawa. There are trees everywhere and the landscaping is immaculate. The park setting we drove through was probably 20 km long and the city seemed very clean! The down side to Ottawa is that it almost seems over the top. I couldn't help notice where the taxpayer dollars were going almost every second I was there. Twenty armed guards in a caravan of black cars for the PM, taxpayer dollars...twenty other new black cars of various make and model to drive dignitaries and members of Parliament around, taxpayer dollars...and finally the guy arguing with "Vince" the parking attendant over the fact he needed to expense his overly-expensive parking...more taxpayer dollars.
We have left Ottawa, headed for Montreal and Quebec City. We are not sure about a stop in Montreal seeing as how we had left after noon again, and we definitely want to get to our booked room for the evening in Quebec City.
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