Ottawa, Day 2

Aug 1 -- (Continued) To cool off we hit the pool, which was nice, but a bit chloriney, but nice. Definitely hit the spot after such a hottttttt day. After we headed over to the Byward Market for supper at a little Vietnamese restaurant, Café Indochine, where I had the steamed salmon and a spring roll and pineapple sour soup to start. Everything was really good and we finished off with an iced coffee. Then we walked past the American Embassy and around the back of the Chateau Laurier to see the Rideau canal by night. Then we came back to get an early and good night's sleep.

Aug 2 --We started the day at about 9am, and headed over towards parliament. En route we saw a little of the changing of the guard, and tons of people gathered around to watch, we broke away to see if we could get a tour of parliament. Turns out the ceremony happens everyday anyway! On the tour we saw the House of Commons, the Senate, and the lovely library, which is newly opened. In the House there are stained glass windows with the flowers representing each province. The door between the Library and rest of Parliament is iron, which prevented the fire in 1918(or 19?) from spreading from the main building to the library and destroying the collection. Clever, eh? The decorations inside Parliament is really nice, and there are lots of stone carvings often representing all of the different provinces.

After we walked around for a long time looking for some place to eat lunch, we finally settled on Eggspectation. Then it was off to the Supreme Court, where we were the only ones on our tour. We got to see the Federal Court and Supreme Court, which apparently looks bigger on TV. There is a former justice who looks very much like Peter Mansbridge (a CBC anchorman), and the first woman on the supreme court went to Dalhousie! Perhaps Matt was inspired. To round out our day in the nation's capital, we headed over to the War Museum. There was a special exhibit was on the Seven Years War. The museum was very interesting and informative, though it seemed like the exhibits never went into how the various wars were resolved. There was also a large hall with many tanks and other vehicles on display including the Panzer and a UN peacekeeping truck.

We returned to the hotel to give our feet a break before dinner and cool off with another swim in the pool. We picked out an Italian restaurant in the Byward market called Mamma Grazzi's. It was pretty good, I was satisfied with my caprese salad and Matt and I shared a pizza. Rain had been predicted for the day, and though it had rained whilst we were swimming it stopped en route to the restaurant. Unfortunately when we left, it was absolutely pouring and we had to get our feet totally soaked on the sidewalk, and though we thought to bring an umbrella our clothes were pretty wet as well. Humph.

Now we're back safe at the hotel, and can hear the rain still pouring outside. Matt is commenting incessantly about my writing, and has compared it to the parliament, where I am the House of Commons preparing a bill/blog, and he is the Senate correcting and approving. What a good analogy! Tomorrow we're off to Toronto! and I shall try to add some pictures soon.