Dominica and I got up, accidentally, very early this morning. I actually woke up on my own at 4:30 am. That might be an okay time for Eric but it sure isn’t for me. I was up and dressed and showered and everything long before the in-room breakfast was delivered. The hotel was really nice; we stayed at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa which is now a Fairmost Property but used to be part of the old Canadian railway hotels that exists all along the old trans-Canadian train routes.
Yesterday, Min and I went to the Museum of Civilization across the river in Hull Gatineau, Quebec. That was a really neat museum; it is no wonder that it is the most popular museum in all of Canada. We spent most of the afternoon there. The drive up to Ottawa only took us four hours. We were surprised how little driving it took to get there. That included stopping at the border. The weather was awesome – you could see Ottawa across the river with Parliment and the federal buildings sitting right on the waterfront shrouded in fog. It was amazing.
After leaving the museum, we headed over and checked into the hotel and then we stopped by the lounge for tea. Unfortunely, they were out of tea so we just grabbed some appetizers and then we headed out to explore the ByWard Market. We ate dinner at this really cool litte Italian place in the market where we ordered way too much food and couldn’t possibly have eaten it all.
Today we went shopping for some shoes first thing in the morning because Min broke hers yesterday while we were walking around town. Her sole just split so we needed to get her something that she could walk in. We tried the Hudson Bay Company but they didn’t open till late so we did some book shopping. While Dominica got shoes I got books. She got two new pairs of shoes and I got books on World Wine tours, a history of the Celts, the Huns and the Goths and the Art of War abridged. Five books in all. Some really good stuff.
After shopping we went to the Ottawa Science and Technology Museum which, as it turns out, is a not very good museum that my parents took me to when I was very young. I remember having gone there after we were part way through it. Very little has changed since I was first there many, many years ago. The exhibits were not very exciting and many had totally inaccurate information and were completely out of date.