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January 2001

Ottawa

David Aaronson
2005-09-25 18:56:24

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from the flame on top of it.

The day we arrived was the day the Rideau Canal opened for the season. The canal is a scenic waterway through the center of the city. In the winter when it freezes, it becomes the self-proclaimed 'worlds longest skating rink'. For the record, that's 7 km (4.2 mi) one way. Once it opens, small villages appear along it renting skates and selling refreshments and souvenirs.

They are separated by long stretches of open ice. We rented skates at one end and skated in towards the middle of Ottawa. The real difficulty with skating on a canal versus a rink, is that at the end you have to backtrack to where you rented the skates from. We went about 4km (2.5 mi) down the canal before we decided we had better return. Thankfully, there are benches spaced along the sides of the canal for resting purposes.

There are even a few full service restaurants along the canal although you might want to be carrying your shoes with you if you plan to visit one. We didn't trust ourselves to skate however many miles back to the hotel it might be after a hearty meal, so we finished skating and then went in search of dinner. We found a restored Victorian steakhouse nearby and then returned to the hotel.

Upon returning we intended to visit the hotel bar but it was closed due to lack of interest. We then tried the hotel next door which boldly advertised on their door that the pub was open until midnight. However, at just after 10 PM, they also were closed. Determined now we ventured a couple blocks further past at least one more closed hotel pub before we found a non-hotel oriented pub which was still open, and at last we could have a nice Canadian beer (which we greatly prefer to a nice American beer, even if it still isn't quite as good as a nice Belgian beer.) (For the record, Melanie enjoyed a nice Canadian cider instead.) This picture is of downtown Ottawa as seen from our hotel room (5).

As mentioned earlier, we visited the Canadian National Gallery the next morning before leaving Ottawa. Our drive to Toronto is definately worth noting. We started out on back roads, hoping to see more interesting parts of Ontario. About an hour into the trip it started snowing. It continued snowing, the sun set and we found that we weren't very happy to be on a smaller road anymore. After several painstakingly slow hours in the snow, we finally hit the highway in Petersborough. This was not much better because a line of three snowplows covered the entire road and rolled along at equally painstakingly slow speeds. When we finally hit the 401 into Toronto we were overjoyed. We then stopped in Oshawa for dinner at the Otter and Firkin pub. Why? Well, because it has the word 'otter' in it of course. Continuing on to Toronto we then discovered no less than 7 snowplows performing a similar barricade sort of action on Canada's largest highway. Why they can't stagger themselves so traffic can get by is a great mystery to us. In the end it took over 7 hours to get from Ottawa to Toronto.