Full-Time Tourism

When you are working hard at being a tourist, you generate a lot of pictures, but not as many blog postings. Over the past three days, as we've hosted my brother and sister-in-law here in Ottawa, I have taken more than 150 pictures. Unfortunately, our ambitious tourism schedule has left little time for blogging. It is now time to bring things back into balance.


We planned a long list of activities and sights to show our visitors, but we probably had the best results on Thursday. This success was mainly because our plans appealed to that most discerning of demographics -- 3-year-olds. Our little niece Alli turned 3 this week, and she loves strawberries.



We took the group out south of town to pick strawberries in the morning, and it didn't take us long to fill four baskets and stain our tongues with juicy red fruit. Picking berries isn't a regular activity for us, but we've wanted to do it again ever since we went out with two of our friends (Eric & Jen) back in 2002. You don't really find berry farms like these out in Alberta, so this was a neat experience for all.

We always take visitors on a driving tour to highlight some of the best sights in the capital. This always includes a loop past the Museum of Civilization on the Quebec side of the river, over in Gatineau. From the museum grounds you can take some fantastic pictures of Parliament Hill and downtown Ottawa. On Thursdays the museum has free admission from 5pm to 9pm, so we stopped in for a few hours instead of just driving by.

In previous visits to the museum, we'd taken in such special exhibits as "The Mysterious Bog People" and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but we'd never noticed the Children's Museum section on the 2nd floor. Perhaps it was because we'd never gone to the museum with children. You see, kids aren't that interested in Bog People, or Sea Scrolls, regardless how Dead or Mysterious they might be. On the other hand, kids are quite interested in international villages constructed to 1/4 scale, shiny buses from Pakistan and kid-sized cargo ships with real operating cranes.


It was total mayhem in there, but it was entirely kid-proof and absolutely enormous, so the mayhem was very civilized. The only incident we caused where they had to get security involved was when little Alli froze at the top of a long escalator and wouldn't come down. She eventually capitulated.


When you are out about town and you need a quick meal, you needn't look far to find a source of shawarma. If you haven't had shawarma before, it's very much like donair/döner or Greek gyros. In fact, they are so similar that I have no idea what the differences are. Regardless what the definition is, there is shawarma a-plenty in this town.

We grabbed some shawarma on Dalhousie Street and headed off to the front lawn of Parliament Hill to watch the "Light and Sound Show", a 30-minute dose of patriotism which is projected onto the front of the Centre Block of Parliament. It's something that every Canadian should get to see. Since it runs every evening at 9:30 and 10:30, a large number will get to see it this year.

It was quite a busy day, quite a tiring day, but quite a wonderful day in the capital.

I've got plenty more material like this, because we kept this pace going for three straight days -- three straight days with three children under the age of three.

More posts coming.