New Bytown

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Our Ottawa trip was pure happenstance and luck, even more so than the Montreal trip. When booking flights to Newfoundland, we discovered that it was cheaper to fly to St. John´s from Ottawa than from Montreal, even though Montreal is closer in distance. Way to go Canada! And so on Thursday afternoon, August 20st, we took the Greyhound from Montreal to North America´s capital.

Not that we didn´t have great reasons for visiting Ottawa - we were met at the bus station by our good friends Professor Sophie Thériault and Indiana Aaron. Sophie took us to her favorite pub for some food and pints, and we ended the evening with a walk along the Rideau Canal (tried skating it, but ...).

The next day, we visited the heart of Canadian democracy, the venerable House of Parliament, where Canadian elected officials work to this very day! Actually nobody was doing any work the day we visited, but the buildings are beautiful (in spite of a little fire in 1916) and respectably old. We also stopped by the Byward Market, where Obama had visited during his trip to Ottawa. The bakery that had sold him maple leaf-shaped "Canada" cookies are now marketing them as "Obama cookies." See picture - Go captialism!

We spent the evening visiting my old Newfoundland friend Charlene, and her boys Jonathan and Nathaniel. At this point we though we knew everything children were capable of (see Glory Days Blog), but Jonathan and Nathaniel showed us a few new tricks. They even showed Charlene a few new moves that we won´t discuss in a public forum.

The next morning, we finally got to see Charlene´s husband Andy, who had been busy the previous day and night delivering babies. Charlene and I introduced Eva to the Canadian breakfast phenom Cora´s, which stacks their amazing breakfasts with boatloads of fresh fruit. We ended our Ottawa trip with a visit to the Bytown museum located next to the locks on the Rideau canal. There we learned that a) Ottawa used to be a seedy logging town named "Bytown" after John By, the commander for the canal project, and b) the canal was constructed to defend Canada from attack by the United States. The canal is still defending us to this day.

In spite of a miscalculation on somebody´s part and the loss of whole hour of bus commute time, we made it to the airport in time to catch our flight to Newfoundland that Saturday afternoon.

Thanks to Sophie, Aaron, Charlene, and Andy for letting us stay with you! We had a great visit and hope to see you soon!

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