Another day begins bright and early thanks to our insistent, ever reliable alarm
clock, George. As normal we were up to see Jacqui off to work, but this morning
was a little different. Not only was George happy walking past the Wiener’s, he
actually petted them 
! He then told us that their ears were “as soft as
socks”, much to everyone’s amusement 
. So it seems that George can get used
to most dogs given enough time.
The plan for today was to drive into Ottawa with Rick just after rush hour to
see what there is to see. When we got there we had the usual issue you have in
any city, finding somewhere to park! After about 20 minutes we parked in the
Natural History Museum car park which made the decision of where to go first
really simple. Given we wanted to see as much of what Ottawa had to offer in one
day, we didn’t have long so George was given the map and we were off to see the
dinosaurs! We zoomed around them before discovering that what he was actually
looking for was the weird jellyfish like thing that was hanging in the giant
glass box above the entrance 
. Nevermind, that at least brought us to a
brilliant exhibit about the geology of the earth. It’s not something I would
normally seek out, but it was fascinating and really well done for kids so
George loved it. If it hadn’t been for our time constraints, I think George
would have stayed there all day!
Our next experience was a local diner for lunch. Now I’ve seen them on TV where the waiter/waitress refills your coffee cup before it’s empty, but I never realised that was actually how things work over here! I was mildly disappointed with the size of the cup having asked for a large, but then it was filled up repeatedly without us having to ask and it was only $2! It was amazing! This is a lesson we really need to learn back home!!!
With our bellies filled, we continued on to our planned first stop of the day, the ticket place for access to the Peace Tower in the Canadian Parliament building. It seems that today was not to be our day. Apparently all the tickets had been given out within an hour of the place opening, so about 30 minutes before we even arrived in Ottawa! Ah well, maybe next time. We instead spent the afternoon seeing the sites, like the Parliament building, the Rideau Canal, the bizarre mixture of architecture that wouldn’t be allowed in the UK (there doesn’t seem to be any draconian planning rules in force here) and we even managed to have a mini snowball fight, it was ace!
During our wanderings we were introduced to the most amazing sweet snack ever,
Beaver Tails. They are simply a dough flattened out to the shape of a beaver
tail and deep fried with a topping added. There were loads of options, but they
were mainly sweet toppings and Rick recommended the maple butter. It was
incredible and I cannot recommend them highly enough, you just have to try them!
I admit that the volume of sugar consumed in such a short period of time can be
a little overwhelming, but its nothing a strong cup of coffee won’t fix 
.
We picked Jacqui up from work which was possibly the bit George was excited
about most of all. She works on the 15/16th floor of her building so she invited
us up to the 16th floor to get a view most tourists don’t get. We looked out
over the city at the Peace Tower so it turns out it wasn’t such a bad thing that
we missed out earlier 
. The plan then was to take Jacqui and Rick out
for dinner, but given Rosie and I don’t know the area, we said they should
choose. Again, things didn’t work out how we would have liked. The restaurant
couldn’t seat us for another 3 hours and George was snoring away in the back
seat so we instead made the decision to have Chinese takeaway and go home.
George must have been exhausted because he didn’t wake when we got the Chinese, he didn’t wake when we got him out of the car, and he didn’t wake when we tried to wake him for food. Instead, we put him straight to bed and had a quiet evening meal just the four of us.
Tomorrow is possibly going to be the best day of the first half of our holiday
because we are going to the maple syrup place. I’m not sure who is most excited
about it, but I have a funny feeling it may actually be me 
.
