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Mon­day morn­ing we went down­town and stum­bled into the very last Rideau Canal tour of the sea­son (the tours were sup­posed to end on Sun­day, but a group had already booked on Mon­day’s ride, so they ran it). Since they also offered an Ottawa Riv­er tour, with an almost 20% dis­count on com­bo tick­ets, we decid­ed to do both.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Ottawa: By Water” →

We’d trav­elled to Win­nipeg on Sat­ur­day, because our Sun­day flight was an ear­ly one. Got to the YWG air­port in plen­ty of time to go through secu­ri­ty (unlike a woman behind us in the secu­ri­ty line, who said to the offi­cer, “My flight’s in 15 min­utes,” to which he respond­ed, “You should’ve got here soon­er then”).

Unevent­ful flight, or I guess flights: Win­nipeg to Toron­to, where we changed gates and got on the Toron­to-Ottawa flight. Kath­leen watched Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 on the flight, and I snoozed and watched the very first Sil­i­con Val­ley episode.

In Ottawa, we got the rental car, found the hotel, checked in. Then we wan­dered around the down­town, dis­cov­er­ing we were lit­er­al­ly three blocks from Par­lia­ment Hill. The War Memo­r­i­al was easy to find, and in our aim­less saun­ter­ing we also dis­cov­ered the US Embassy, the Mint, the Nation­al Gallery, the Rideau Canal, and Byward Mar­ket, among many oth­er points of inter­est. We paused on the Nation­al Gallery’s plaza to admire the sil­ver tow­ers of Notre Dame Cathe­dral Basil­i­ca across the street. Also the giant spi­der on the plaza was pret­ty interesting.

A giant spi­der at the Nation­al Gallery. 

It’s hard to miss. 

We found a Dar­cy McGee’s, which had been rec­om­mend­ed to us, and ate on the patio, then bought tick­ets next door for Mon­day evening’s Ghost Walk.

We got back to the hotel about 6:30 and climbed into bed. I read, briefly, then fell asleep before 8 PM, for which Kath­leen laughed at me for the next cou­ple days.

Step count: 9526.