Ottawa

Ottawa is great! Its is the capital of Canada, it is in Ontario, and English is the predominant language here. It is much smaller than Montreal and feels more English than French. We arrived here June 11 and spent 2 nights.

Ottawa skyline

To get here, we had to climb the steps- Locks 1-8 of the Rideau Canal. These locks are literally stairs steps for boars. They are small, hand-cranked, and were constructed in the 1820's, and remain pretty much unchanged. We were the only boat in the locks.

Looking up at the locks before we entered

Looking down the locks after our lockage

After locking through, we were right on Parliament Hill, a 10 minute walk to this historic building. Of course we had to take a tour! After this summer, tours will be unavailable for the next 10 years as this national treasure undergoes extensive renovation. Having been warned that the English tour tickets go quickly, Mark decided to get in line an hour before the 9 a.m. opening of the ticket office. He was the first person in line!

Parliament Building with the Peace Tower in the center

The tour included the Memorial Hallway, the Library, and the Peace Tower. We could not enter the House of Commons or the Senate since both houses were working. The library contains over 1,000,000 volumes, many of which are stored elsewhere.

Queen Victoria statue in the library 

The plaques in the Hall of Memory list every member of Parliament- if you look closely as we accidentally did, you can see the Mather, B. was an MP for several years in the 1960's!

The view from the Peace Tower was impressive.

The East Office building - the West Building looks pretty much like this one.

Fairmont Hotel

War Memorial

One of these men in the foreground is a member of the Scottish Brigade. 

The Guard changes every hour at the War Memorial

We checked out the By Market District of shops and outdoor cafes, and sampled a Beavertail- a tasty pastry with about 30 grams of sugar.

The Rideau Canal wall where we are moored, behind the larger boat. In a few weeks both sides will be lined with boats, but we are here a little early in the season.

Today, June 13, we continued up the Rideau. We went through another 8 small, hand operated locks in the space of 16 miles. We also had to have 3 low bridges opened, and the first one made us wait about 45 minutes. This is as far as we could go today, since the next set of locks would be closed for the day by the time we arrived. So we are in Manotick, Ontario, at Hurst Marina for the night. They have a pool and hot tub, but we  rain and thunderstorms kept us inside. Oh well- tomorrow is another adventure.