The Weekend

Our last cou­ple days in Ottawa, Kath­leen had a cold and I felt the start of one.

Saturday

We got mov­ing about 12:30, and head­ed out — for the first time since Mon­day — with no clear idea what we were going to do. I’d post­ed a pho­to to Face­book hint­ing that we were in Ottawa, and pre­dictably many friends had many sug­ges­tions. Some of them we’d already done, some we had yet to accomplish.

After spend­ing a few min­utes at the War Memo­r­i­al, most­ly so I could get some pho­tos, we made our way to Welling­ton, the street that faces Par­lia­ment. As we’d only made it so far to Par­lia­ment, we decid­ed to keep walk­ing west down Welling­ton and see what we found. This brought us to the Bank of Cana­da muse­um, which was a) open and b) free. We went in and checked it out.

They give you these rub­bery lit­tle wrist­bands with some kind of NFC whatz­it embed­ded in a smi­ley face. Kath­leen’s was wink­ing. You’re encour­aged to cre­ate an avatar and name it — mine was Goofter, and Kath­leen’s was Katy — and then use the NFC device to inter­act with the exhibits. It was a fun lit­tle tour, most­ly aimed at kids, but still edi­fy­ing. (I learned, for instance, that in the ear­ly days of the TD bank, rur­al folk had to be con­vinced that a bank was at least as secure as bury­ing your mon­ey or stuff­ing it in your mat­tress. So they cre­at­ed lit­er­al “banks” for the farm, a met­al scale mod­el of the home office that you’d drop your coins and bills into. Dif­fer­ent slots fed dif­fer­ent accounts. Once a month or so, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the bank would come by on a tour, with a key that would open the bank. He’d take the mon­ey back to the actu­al bank and deposit it for you.)

After that we kept on going west, pass­ing the Cana­di­an Press Club, the actu­al Bank of Cana­da edi­fice, and sundry oth­er his­toric land­marks. I got a cou­ple pho­tos of the Supreme Court, and then we head­ed south on Lyon, head­ed rough­ly back to the hotel.

Kath­leen want­ed a phar­ma­cy, and we dis­cov­ered a Super Thrifty a cou­ple blocks from the hotel, where we got some med­i­cine and stocked up on tooth­paste and Halls. Then we wan­dered some more, find­ing Scone Witch around 3 PM, and had a super late, super deli­cious lunch.

One of our friends help­ful­ly rec­om­mend­ed that we check out Cup­cake Lounge, which, as it turned out, has a loca­tion in Byward Mar­ket. On the way there we stopped in again at Lindt, and I broke down and bought 10 choco­late bars for $30. Once we found Cup­cake Lounge we shared a deli­cious choco­late-chip-and-peanut-but­ter cup­cake and had coffee.

We returned to the hotel about 6 PM and lounged for a while. At 10:00 PM we ven­tured out again to check out the WWI names pro­ject­ed in memo­ri­am on the side of the Fed­er­al Con­fer­ence Cen­tre as part of The World Remem­bers.

Step count: 11012

Sunday

Kath­leen checked on Sat­ur­day night about the chang­ing of the guard at the War Memo­r­i­al. There are hon­our guards at the two front cor­ners from 9 AM to 5 PM daily.

Sun­day morn­ing she was­n’t feel­ing very well, so I let her sleep and ven­tured out on my own to the Memo­r­i­al. I got out­side and saw that I’d just missed a rain­show­er — the streets were wet and shiny. Then at the cor­ner of Albert & Elgin, it start­ed to driz­zle — a sun­show­er. By the time I got to the memo­r­i­al, the sun had dis­ap­peared and it was rain­ing in earnest. I took shel­ter under a tree and wait­ed it out. It was about 8:40 when I arrived.

The rain inten­si­fied, so that the tree was­n’t real­ly much shel­ter any­more. I wait­ed. After a while I real­ized that the rain had actu­al­ly ceased, and what was pour­ing down on me, now, was the water from the leaves, so I emerged from the canopy.

At about 8:58 I heard the bag­pipes and saw the hon­our guard march­ing out, six strong includ­ing the piper and the sergeant. They did their rit­u­al, and I got it on video.

When they’d fin­ished, the sun broke through again, and I got a cou­ple snaps of the memo­r­i­al in full sun­light. Then I head­ed back to the hotel, for break­fast and show­er and shoe shining.

After that we found our way to the resort where I shot the wed­ding. I’ve been asked to not post pho­tos of the bride and groom online, but here’s one of Kath­leen from the reception.

And then on Mon­day, at 7:30 AM, we flew home, and our vaca­tion was in the his­to­ry books.

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