North Bay to Ottawa
Our luxurious suite included a continental breakfast (a muffin) brought to the room, so we were fed and on our way to Ottawa in no time. It was a four hour drive through a pretty but repetitive series of forests, lakes and farmland, punctuated only by a lunch visit to Tim Horton's. Tim Horton's is apparently Canada's number one coffee house chain, with Starbucks only making number three (second is "Second Cup").
We enjoyed a lunch of soup and a sandwich. Despite sharing a premises with Wendy's burgers, Tim's eat-in food is served in proper crockery on a silver tray (maybe steel...). The coffee was good too.
The road through Canada so far follows the railway track quite closely. Today we glimpsed a pickup truck (<sigh>) on the railway track, presumably doing repairs. I had my eyes on the road, but Debbie noticed that the truck had adapters on its wheels, so it rode on the railway tracks themselves. I want one...
The lady in the post office in Michigan warned us about Canadian drivers, and we laughed it off. It turns out she had a point. There are speed limits posted, but as far as I can tell, we're the only people paying the blindest bit of attention to them (and I'm usually going 10kph or so over just to approach what the natives are doing). Debbie was almost run off the road yesterday when a sportscar chose to overtake her just as the overtaking lane ended. The way overtaking lanes work is that they appear as a new lane on the left hand of the carrageway. Normal traffic stays in the right-hand lane, while overtaking vehicles can go into the left-hand lane. Going back to one lane, however, it's the right-hand lane that peters out, so the normal traffic has to filter left.
We saw one of the cars which had torn past us, with its front caved in and attended by a policeman. The other cars who saw this didn't learn their lesson.
All this is background, to explain my discomfort on the approach roads to Ottawa, where the road grows into a five lane highway with all sorts of exit-only lanes and frequent turnoffs. I was driving, Debbie was navigating (very well!), and we were not feeling charitable towards the city when we finally pulled into a space in a pay and display car park near Parliament Hill.
The walk from the car to Parliament Hill painted a grim picture of Ottawa as just another grubby, busy city, but as we reached the parliament area itself, it opened out and revealed itself to be very pleasant.
Now, this bilingualism lark is all very commendable, but I feel that when writing English prose to go on plaques, which may be there for some time, it may be an idea to get a native speaker of the language to check it over:
Am I wrong in thinking they wanted the word "lit"?
We popped into the tourist information building to orientate ourselves, and soon had a hotel reservation very nearby, and a plan for the rest of the day.
We booked a tour of the Parliament building, then went to check into the hotel. The hotel car park is tiny and cramped. Our car is parked on a ramp. We were terrified it would roll into the car in front, or the car behind would roll into ours, until we remembered we're insured to the hilt and it's not our car anyway...
We returned to the Parliament building in time for the tour, which was led by a delightful young lady called Emilie. The building is fantastic. Parliament itself closely resembles British parliament; the two sides of the House, the Speaker's seat, the mace and so on. The Upper Chamber is attended by a Senate, which takes the place of a House of Lords. The building itself was rebuilt shortly after the First World War, having been destroyed in a fire. The new building strikes just the right balance between pomp and humour. Yes, it has Gothic arches and portaits of former prime ministers, speakers and monarchs carved into the stonework -- but it also has contemplative imps looking down on the assembly, Green Men carved into the library shelves and portraits of the sculptors themselves snuck in without prior approval.
We took a short walk around the building on our way to dinner, taking in some other sights along the way. The Ottawa locks aren't a patch on the Sault St. Marie ones...
After dinner, a quick pasta, we went straight back to Parliament Hill. On the way, we spotted a Penny Farthing parked up against a lamp post. Odd.
The reason we went back to Parliament Hill was that there was a lightshow scheduled, projected against the building. We caught the end of the French version, then sat down to watch the English version in its entireity. As we waited, we wondered why we heard thunder. We decided it was fireworks, and theorised as to what the occasion could be, and why we didn't see any fireworks. Then we decided it must be thunder after all... but there were no clouds, we could see stars... definitely fireworks.
All became clear when the show started -- the thunder was part of the show, and was coming (loudly) from rear speakers. Just as the Coulee Dam laser show was narrated by a personification of the Columbia River, this show was narrated by a series of winds -- the breeze, the blizzard, the chinook etc. -- talking of their impression of Canada. We stood for the Candian National Anthem at the end, and for once I didn't mind. I felt proud to be Canadian, and said so, before Debbie cruelly reminded me that I'm not.
I consoled myself by musing that, for all Canada's greatness, some of the people trying to take flash photographs of the lightshow were probably Canadian, and Canada also has Sudbury, which didn't feature in the light show because it sucks.
And so, back to the hotel, where Debbie lies nodding off, and I type for far too long.