National Gallery

We head­ed out around noon, and walked down to the Cana­di­an Nation­al Gallery. We spent almost four hours tour­ing the gal­leries, where I dis­cov­ered that I pre­fer paint­ings of land­scapes to por­traits, gen­er­al­ly, though I did find a few por­traits inter­est­ing as well.

We start­ed off on the 2^nd floor, in the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can sec­tion, work­ing our way from the Renais­sance to the 20^th cen­tu­ry. I iden­ti­fied the Turn­er paint­ing on sight, before I read the lit­tle tag, and I also geeked out a bit when I saw the Cor­nell box (Cor­nel­l’s work fea­tures in the first William Gib­son nov­el I ever read, Count Zero).

The Annun­ci­a­tion of the Vir­gin’s Death, by Paulus Bor (called Orlando). 

Two Water­falls, by Mein­dert Hobberma. 

A Water­fall, by Jacob von Ruisdael. 

Tomb of Gen­er­al Brock, by Thomas Cole. 

Mer­cury and Argus, by J. M. W. Turner. 

Sup­per at the Mai­son d’Or, by Thomas Couture 

The Hotel Eden, by Joseph Cornell. 

Voice of Fire, by Bar­nett Newman. 

A Meet­ing of the School Trustees, by Robert Harris. 

Snow II, by Lawren S. Harris. 

Stormy Weath­er, Geor­gian Bay, by F. H. Varley. 

Park, by Shirley Wiitasalo. 

We peeked into the Cana­di­an Pho­tog­ra­phy Insti­tute, find­ing only one small dis­play in there — the rest was closed for instal­la­tion, we think. After lunch we checked out the Cana­di­an and Indige­nous sec­tion — the set­tlers sure liked their sil­ver­ware — and found Voice of Fire, about which I remem­ber a real­ly big stink in the late 80s/early 90s. After that we quick­ly toured through the Con­tem­po­rary exhib­it, where I only took a few pho­tos, as noth­ing real­ly stirred me there.

(One day I’ll have to post a larg­er selec­tion of the art from the Gallery. I took a lot — I mean a lot — of photos.)

By now it was after 4 PM, and we were due to meet up with Veron­i­ca just before 6. We made our way to the Byward Mar­ket, where we got some flow­ers for the More­aux.  Then we stopped in at the Lindt store, where we dis­cov­ered that their 100-truf­fle bags were on sale. So we loaded up on choco­late (mmm­mm) and then head­ed back to the hotel.

We man­aged to find the McN­abb com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, where I dropped Kath­leen off with Veron­i­ca and Lianne to do some sam­ba danc­ing. I head­ed out to Rock­land to meet up with the rest of the More­au fam­i­ly. We had piz­za and sal­ad, Jor­dan fed me a cou­ple of dark beers (a Trap­pist one and one with a pic­ture of Count von Count, which I doubt was licensed, on the side), and wait­ed for the dancin’ ladies to arrive. When they did, they ate. (Cen­sus: Me, Kath­leen, Veron­i­ca, Marc, Jor­dan, Stephanie, Corey, Chad, Lianne, and of course Keno, the dog, who hoped we’d drop some food.)

We played a cou­ple rounds of Aval­on, then sev­en hands (or so) of Golf, which I man­aged to win by get­ting Four Cor­ners twice (the first time I’ve man­aged to do that, too). Kath­leen like­wise got her first Four Cor­ners and came in second.

Then we had some deli­cious apple crisp and head­ed back to the hotel, where Kath­leen crashed pret­ty hard and I was­n’t far behind falling asleep.

Step count: 8670.