Miraculously we did not fall off the edge of the earth / into Niagara Falls (I just got too busy with work to give an update); we did make it out, and awoke to a chilly day in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. 

 

When deciding where to go in Canada, my Mum and I weren’t sure about Ottawa. I mean, its the capital, but what exactly is there? Our usual go to, Trip Advisor, wasn’t much help, but we figured hey, what the hell – let’s go see what’s there for ourselves. Honestly, I’m still unclear…

I’ll point out now, by the way, that Ottawa is French speaking – my mum and I speak rudimentary / borderline conversational French, so we weren’t completely lost with our surroundings!

We stayed in a little Bed and Breakfast about a 25 minute walk into the centre of town, and did just that. It was a Sunday morning, and the streets were quite empty. We didn’t really know what to make of it. It felt small towny – tree lined streets, with little notice boards about local events; very… Pleasant.

 

Then suddenly, we were in the middle of it all… huge parliament buildings and office blocks; people campaigning; police cars everywhere. We wandered by the river, took some pictures of parliament (which in fairness, are very pretty) and the centennial flame, and tried to remember all of the Canadian provinces – I’m ashamed to say we only managed about 8, and had to look up the rest.

 

 

I’m sure there’s a lot more of Ottawa to see and do, but that small amount didn’t grab us, so we walked back to the house, got back into the car and made our way to something we were excited about… A sugar shack. Aka where they make maple syrup.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEm1yT_tbo2/?taken-by=abipageaustin

 

We went to the one in the Museo Park, and it was everything I expected. A little shack in the woods, run by very sweet volunteers and filled with friendly people happy to chat. We met two girls studying in Ottawa, that had lived all over the world and spoke at least 7 languages each. There were also families, young people, older people. Err’one loves a bit of maple syrup.

After we’d had our fill, we got back into the car for the 4.5 hour drive to Quebec City where our trip got a whole lot better.

 

If we’d had more time to enjoy Ottawa I’m sure we would have done just that, but the cold weather and streets full of campaigners didn’t lend to an environment in which we wanted to explore. Especially when we knew that our next stop was beautiful Quebec.

 

Abi

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@travelteatv