Ottawa Review - Finale

Okay, so the last installment, covering Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. At some point earlier in the week - Monday, I think - my mom called my great aunt and we made arrangements to go visit her for supper. My great aunt also then said she would call my cousin, whom I'd been meaning to call anyways to finalize arrangements to hang out, and would invite her as well.

I suggested getting some flowers to take her, and then I had to go hunting through the phonebook to find florists since we weren't near any grocery stores etc that would have something potted etc. Plans Wednesday morning were also made to meet my dad for lunch during his break. Needless to say the search for the florist ended up with us at the opposite end of Sparks Street because one of the closer ones was not to be found due to renovations in the one building. Of course after running to the end of Sparks Street and then back to the other end to meet dad, it wasn't until we had lunch in hand and were heading back to the hotel to eat it that we discovered a florist in the bunch of shops right by the hotel. But oh well. The one we ended up at was better. A little place on Sparks Street called Mariana's Flowers. Nice lady, nice little shop too - more than just flowers. We got my great aunt some gerbra daisies and another very pale blue delicate accent flower (I want to call it a lithanium or something like that) with some greenery. We also found a scarf to give someone as a christmas present. On the way there we also discovered another little shop that sold crafty stuff from around the globe, but I can't for the life of me remember the name :( Got some christmas/birthday presents there as well.

So running back to meet dad for lunch, we grabbedd subs from Subway, headed back to the hotel room, ate, then dad left again, and mom and I just chilled and relaxed. We figured there was no point in wearing ourselves out before dinner, and we deserved a rest after the 8.5 hour drive to Ottawa, the long walk after, walking all day Monday, and all day Tuesday. I also finished my halloween costume, and then when dad was done work for the day we headed over to my great aunt's.

We arrived to find my great aunt, my cousin that we knew would be there (who is my great aunt's granddaughter), and one of my great aunt's sons and his wife, who are my cousins whom I'd never met. We had a really nice dinner of ham, scalloped potatoes, mixed veggies, buns, and apple pie with ice cream. My great aunt loved the flowers, and she even busted out the GOOD dishes hahaha. After that we all just sat around and talked, and I showed my cousin a video on youtube of a little old lady crossing the road, and a guy in a Mercedes has to stop to let her cross, and she's... well, how about I just link you to it lol. Remember to open it in a new tab/window, I've got more to say! Anyways, everyone loved the video. After a while there we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

Thursday my mom and I walked to the National Gallery of Canada and met up with my cousin. We were a teeensie bit late since mom kept falling asleep and refusing to get up. It took the me pouncing on her yelling "MOMMY! MOMMY! SANTA CAME!!!" and also yelling "It's after 10, we need to leave! WE NEED TO LEAVE IT'S AFTER TEN!!!" There were quite a few interesting things, but at the same time, a lot of crap. Yes, that's right, I said it - CRAP. Okay, sorry, but I don't think painting a giant canvas solid black is overly artistic. Nor does it make much of a statement. Not even if you paint the sides of the canvas (where you put staples to hold it to the wood) a different colour. Sorry, but no. "New" "contemporary" art actually needs to involve more than a "statement" for me - I won't even read the plaque if it looks that dumb. I don't mind a lot of the abstracts, that's usually what I paint. But a solid black canvas? No. And I have one those sitting beside me, because the black is a base layer. Oh, and they have two of those black squares. When we saw the second one my mom went "Oh look, a black bear in the dark!" Needless to say the other girl in the room kind of looked at us like "OH NO YOU DIIIIDANT!!" and her boyfriend was just like "*snerk**hides smile behind hand*" On the other hand, the good stuff they had was good. A lot of native art, some actual clothing from different times etc etc. It wasn't as cool as the War Museum though lol. They do have a giant spider statue outside named Maman though.

That night dad had a business dinner, so mom and I kidnapped my cousin back to the hotel to hang out, then the three of us went to the Glue Pot Pub for supper, and then back to the hotel for a bit. Then when I was supposed to be walking her out of the hotel so she could go home and do homework, we decided to sit and chat in the hotel's lower lobby, and have ice cream for like 2.5 hours hahaha. Was nice though. Worried mom a bit though, and she sent dad to find me. My cousin went home shortly after that and I went back upstairs to relax in bed and watch TV while editing some stuff for Trystn.

Friday mom and I packed. The hotel didn't have a hotub *gaspshockhorror* so there was no soaking sore muscles before we hit the road for home. That's what we did Friday. Dad had a short meeting in the morning and then we left and drove home. Traffic was pretty good considering we hit the Toronto area around rush hour on a Friday lol. I took like 700 photos hahaha. And that was my trip to Ottawa! Wheeee!

Just a few photos now. You can't take pics in the art gallery of the paintings :( And other than that I didn't take a lot those days that we haven't already seen lol

Maman attacks Notre Dame Cathedral!!


The exhibits on at the gallery


The view from Majors Hill Park on the way back to the hotel. I wish we'd known about that route on the way TO to gallery lol

Ottawa, Part 2 - Canadian War Museum

So we've gone over the drive down on Sunday, and walking around Sunday evening in my previous post. Now we shall talk about Tuesday.

On Tuesday my mom and I walked from the hotel to the Canadian War Museum. Now usually I'm not a huge fan of war - I don't support them, nor do I have any real desire to join the military - but there are some aspects I do like to know about (i.e. as a kid I used to read all the young adult fiction about the Jewish families in hiding, the British children coming to Canada etc.) Anyways, this place is awesome. According to my family that lives in Ottawa, the War Museum has little, to nothing in storage. And given how much there is to see, I'd believe that. I also loved this place because I'm camera happy, and they tell you when you go in to take as many photos as you like (though some things have a sign of a flashing camera with a big red circle crossing the camera out - so no FLASH photography of paintings (obviously. The flash destroys the paint.)

Currently the Museum has an exhibit about Camouflage - from battlefield to catwalk. It's very interesting. They show different types of uniforms over the years, and how different countries have different patterns. They also show how some of it is made/how it was made. They also have a video playing where one half of the screen is actual miltary use of camo, and the other half is models wearing camo on the runways. In this exhibit they also had displays about dazzle ships, which I found absolutely awesome (so awesome I want to buy a model ship and dazzle paint it lol.) They have a periscope simulation where you look though the thing, and it shows boats (with dazzle camo) on the water, and you have to determine which way the boats are headed. It's actually rather hard. The exhibit also features things like fake trees, parachuting decoys, and other military decoys. Then they have actual designers clothes from the catwalk - dresses mostly. They also show how camouflage patterns have been used in fashion/non-military use for things like toys, and packaging.

After leaving that exhibit, we returned into the main galleries, and we mistakenly ended up starting with the more recent wars/military involvements, rather than starting back in about the 1600s where they talk about what the people coming to Canada would have had with them, as well as what the natives would have used. So we went back in time instead of starting earlier in time.

They have a lot of weapons on display - stone and wood clubs, knives and swords, guns ranging from pistols to rifles to machine guns, the BIG guns, and assorted vehicles and tanks. I was very excited about tanks. I like tanks. I want to own a tank. It would make parking near the doors of stores sooo much easier... Back on track now... they also have a wide variety of uniforms on display. There is also art work, and a lot of hands on things. There were a few displays where it looked like you could walk through them etc, my mom walked through the trench one, though I wasn't really sure if you were supposed to or not, and felt kind of bad about walking all over a display.

So as I said in my last paragraph, there is a trench you can (apparently) walk through - you see how tall they were, where soldiers slept, etc. They also had a VERY realistic scene from the battlefields of Passchendaele. The walls had realistic murals of the landscape on them, the ground featured boardwalks, fake mud, crater holes filled with water, weapons etc abandoned to the mud (it rained for 3 months straight at Passchendale) and also a dead soldier lost to the mud (since it rained so much and there were crater holes everywhere, the mud and water were deep that people did drown in them.) If you are a person who has been in battles, please evaluate your sanity before going here. It's an awesome place, but if you've done military time and have been known to have episodes/flashbacks/insane moments I'm not really sure what to call, exercise caution. Unlike a lot of museums, the War Museum has noise. They have soundtracks playing in different exhibits - as in gunfire, bombs/artillery fire, and the like. They also have the realistic scenes of the trenches and Passchendaele (not sure if those would cause anything or not, warfare has changed, but maybe not that much), and they also have some very graphic photos of bodies etc. That said, the majority of the museum is awesome and family friendly etc.

There's a lot of movies playing as well. We didn't really watch any... occassionally I, personally, found it hard to follow them, just because they weren't very loud (most likely to not disturb people looking at other things nearby), so I would try to follow the subtitles - which, due to Ottawa being our country's capital, being right beside Quebec, and being bilingual (English and French for official languages), were in French. My French isn't quiiite that good. One of the best movies/visual demonstrations I loved, was the Armageddon simulation... basically, there's a flat screen TV on the wall. Underneath that are three buttons. Each button shows how a different thing stands up to nuclear Armageddon. Needless to say... I think the forest won (or at least unlike the house and transport truck, only one tree out of the forestted area shown wasn't still standing at the end.) Kind of scary, but also kind of like "Coooolll!!!" The house was awesome... you watch a curtain of nuclear whatever go flying past continually and the house just slowly starts to smoke/turn to ash on the outside and then it just flies apart like it's being hit by a tornado.

As I said, they also have a lot of vehicles on display - cars, trucks, armoured vehicles, planes, helicopters, tanks... They have a whole gallery dedicated to tanks, big trucks, cannons, etc called the Le Breton Gallery. There is also a Canadian Air Force fighter of some sort. I picked out a few tanks I would like to won, the winner being a Self-propelled Howlizter



So before I give it all away, there is A LOT to see and do, and a lot of interesting stuff to be learned. There's some stuff in there you don't even expect to see - slideshows on computers you can look through, another computer that accesses the WWI Canadian soldier Attestation Papers (you can't print them though, but they do say which website you're using, so you can go home and print them off... collectionscanada.com or some such) and yeah, there's just a lot of cool stuff.

It does take most of a day, but it's worth it. There is a restaurant on site called The Mess, it's mainly a cafeteria style of food already prepared that you just grab, which is fine. Both museum admission and food are reasonably priced, and oddly enough, so was the gift shop... lol. Or at least what I was looking at was. I didn't look at the book selection too much, but I would imagine even those were fairly priced for the book.

After seeing the War Museum we walked back to the hotel, stopping by the Garden of the Provinces and Territories - which, being autumn, didn't seem to have a lot of plant life... it was kind of a stone terrace with trees, and it went up the hill from the road to the doors of a church, so yeah... not so sure it has real flowers, or if it's just the painted stone ones on the stone rails around the terrace thing. The fountain was cool though.

Upon arriving back to the hotel we grabbed showers to ease sore feet and legs, and then relaxed until my dad got done work. Then we just went across the road to the Glue Pot Pub and had supper (THEY HAVE YUMMY RIBS!!! [Can you tell I was sick of italian food? lol] And the lasgana is apparently delicious as well, but it's not a main menu item, just a speical offer item. It looked yummy though. Mom had it Thursday night, and dad finished it for her and said it was good too. More about that in the post about Thursday though.) After finishing supper we decided to walk down to the Rideau Center mall and Byward Market. It was a mistake. Mom and I were more tired and sore than expected, and the walk took longer than we thought, or seemed to anyways, and was also very cold. Needless to say, upon arriving at the mall, it was only about an hour to closing, and none of the stores were any we shop in anyways. Byward Market was mostly closed up as well. Mom and I would have rather stayed at the hotel and just relaxed and watched TV I think lol. Which is what we did when we got back.

And now, everyone's favourite part... PICTURES!!! I won't give too much away though :p

The War Museum as viewed from across the road on the way back from the museum...


One of Hitler's Parade cars, complete with bullet holes


So the next post will cover Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as not a huuuge amount happened lol

Ottawa - A Review

Now that I'm home from spending 6 days in Ottawa, I shall do a bit of blogging about it (since I didn't have internet access) and I think to break it into smaller bits, I will do a day or two at a time. So here we go with Sunday and Monday...

Sunday Night
We walked from our hotel to Sparks Street, which has very little traffic - authorized vehicles only, so mainly construction and the odd courier/delivery truck - because it is a mall of sorts. Most things were closed when we got there, which was usual since it was a Sunday and everything closes around 5p.m.. It's also late in the year for many festivals or anything to be happening there. We walked along Sparks Street for a couple blocks, then cut up to Wellington Street and walked by the Parlaiment Buildings because it was more interesting. We walked up and around and saw the statues on the grounds etc, took some photos, then continued over and around to the National War Memorial and then back along Sparks Street to find a place for supper. We had supper at Carmello's, which was yummy, although none of us were really hungry so we split a pizza, then headed back to the hotel to crash for the night.

Monday
Dad had to work, and mom and I decided to ease ourselves into the task of having to walk everywhere. We had breakfast/snack and then headed back over to the Parlaiment Buildings to see about getting tickets for a tour, as the last time we were in Ottawa we couldn't get tickets for a time until later in the day, so we went early so we could then kill time if needed. The tours of the Parlaiment Buildings are free, but most definitely guided, and you do need to go through a security check similar to the one at the airports. We got right in for a tour about 15 minutes after we arrived. It seemed a lot shorter than last time, but Parlaiment was in session, so we weren't allowed into the House of Commons, and a few of the other rooms were in use as well.

The Parlaiment Buildings are actually very nice to look at. They're mostly neo-Gothic style due to a fire or two, the Library is the only original part that didn't burn down, although the interior is newer due to a fire in the library, I think. At the end of the guided tour you can either leave, or go up into the Peace Tower and look out at the city from up there, and then come back down and see the Memorial Chamber as well.

After the indoor tour mom and I walked around the grounds and took daylight shots of the buildings and statues. There is a small fenced area off to the west side of the grounds that has a cat house, which was built in the '70s I believe. It's just a little doghouse-like structure with cut out doors, and straw inside for stray cats to have shelter, and there are also food and water dishes for them as well. The animals also get vetrinary care if needed.

Around the buildings they have statues, etc and you walk behind and see the back of the Parlaiment Buildings, and there are some awesome views of the river, and the city, and looking over to Quebec. After taking pics of the statues etc around there, we headed over to the National War Memorial to get daylight photos. The War Memorial is very pretty. It also has, at its base, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Apparently most countries have a tomb/monument now for an Unknown Soldier, meant to honour all those who were lost and unable to be identified. This tomb contains the remains of an unknown soldier who died in WWI, and were brought over from a cemetary near Vimy Ridge. For the most part when we passed it, the area was empty, aside from the odd tourist, or people cutting through the area, or people maintaining it. But that day we were standing there, looking at it, reading the plaques, and taking photos, a woman came up, stopped by the grave, kneeled down, crossed herself, and prayed for probably about five minutes before crossing herself again and leaving. The only reason I can think of as to why this struck me as highly interesting was because I've never seen anyone do this aside from days when someone has actually died, or it's a ceremonial/special day, like Rememberance Day. I also just found the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to be highly interesting - which to me, along with my "MUST SEE!!" fascination with the War Museum, is rather odd since I have very little connection to military or war... I'm not IN the military, I don't know a lot of people who are, etc. I also love seeing the photos of people who also care, where the grave is covered in Canadian flags, cut flowers, photos, letters, or poppies, like in THIS photo here.

After leaving the War Memorial, mom and I headed back down Sparks Street towards the hotel since dad would be off work soon. We stopped in at the Zellers and picked up some stuff we needed, and then went back to the hotel. That night we at the Bay Street Bistro, which had a menu almost identical to Carmello's (which that night, was NOT what I wanted to see since I find a lot Italian food gives me indigestion/heartburn - I blame the tomato sauce) but they had a very yummy pizza (chicken, cheese, pesto and tomato cubes.) After that I think we just went back to the hotel because mom was tired and it was COLD.

Next post will be about Tuesday! The day we ventured to the Canadian War Museum... and I took photos of EEEEVERYTHING (but I won't post them all. If any. We'll see! It's so hard to choose! I took like 236 photos!)

And now, a photo (or five) for you! EDIT: I shrunk them, because it DID cut them off (on my screen at least.) And I didn't like that. Grrrr. Fucking Blogspot... might have to switch to a different template again since that kind of pisses me off) So please remember to click to enlarge!

The Peace Tower, at twilight


The Library, at twilight. Minus the weathervane though, I cut it off by accident when taking the pic apparently. Another shot will be posted later.


The Parlaiment Buildings, center block, during the day


The front of The National War Memorial at night


The Tomb of the Unknown Solider, at night


Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during the day, to show the medieval sword (for courage), the laurel, the maple leaves and helmet on top


The back of the National War Memorial during the day