Sunset in Ottawa, just to the side of Matt's (old) work building.
Oh, those Canadians! Watch your head.
Marc getting a lift.
After breakfast, we returned “home” and finally headed off for Ottawa (just after noon. Ugh). We forgot to leave a chocolate bar for the kids that we thought about the previous night. :(
We stopped in a grocery store for a couple of supplies, and had fun getting familiar with kilograms vs pounds, dollars to ounces, doing our usual low coast comparisons. Kinda a new twist on a theme for us.
We ended up having to drive right by Toronto, not having time to stop; we got the barest glimpse of the city skyline in the distance. The population centers rapidly died out with the setting sun, and the rest of the trip to Ottawa was dark- we couldn’t even see farm houses on the drive in! Lonely country.
We arrived in Ottawa around 5:30 and headed straight for Matt and Mark’s place. They looked just like we last saw them in Puerto Vallarta, only a little more pale! J We were all pretty giddy for a bit and then we headed off to eat! Matt was “super hungry” so we went directly to the parliament buildings and got a tour of downtown for about an hour and a half. The buildings were beautiful. They have been doing some restoration work on most of the buildings so some have protective barriers around them. It was amazing to us “Southerners” that you could walk right up to the buildings, at night, without any security or anything!!! We even looked into the peep hole in the door to one of the parliament buildings! Imagine doing that in the states… can you say Guantanamo?
Sunset in Ottawa, just to the side of Matt's (old) work building.
Gravity seems to have failed in front of the Museum of Civilization.
Jumping for joy on the riverbank, the capitol in the background.
We rounded out our tour of downtown with a trip past the American Embassy. It used to be right across from the parliament buildings, but it was deemed to be a little too risky as, well, people get to walk by it. Now it is off in the old district of town, complete with fence, barriers and neo modern architecture… a great fit for the historic old buildings that surround it!
We finally made it to the restaurant for some eats. They gave Mark the tourist season menu, $1.00 more for each item, and the rest of us got the regular menu. The waiter promptly flung that one to the side, only to bend over to retrieve it later :) !
We continued our tour around downtown on the way home. Since Matt and Mark had to work the next day, they needed to get some sleeping done. This also gave Tony and I some time to catch up on sleep and relaxing and do some lounging around and lamenting on the passage of Prop. 8 in California – a state constitutional amendment taking away Tony and my ability to marry, I guess a few other people’s as well!.
I went out to move the car (only 2 hour parking spots around downtown) and wasn’t having much luck on the first two passes so I headed off for a little driving tour while Tony was doing some consulting for the SF Botanical Garden. I managed to pass by the Parkdale Market, which is kind of like a farmer’s market area and stopped for some fresh veggies! Then on the way back home I managed to drive through Chinatown which ended up being pretty close to the house! What luck!
After finding a parking place and ensuring Tony was completely ensnarerd in his consulting, I headed off to Chinatown to see what wonders they had in the markets! True to form, it was Chinatown, complete with durian (if you don’t know what that is, count yourself among the lucky, if you do, condolences from us!), the chickens in the windows and all kinds of fun and weird things to eat, I think… can you really eat that stuff?
When Matt returned home we all headed out for a walk. This time we went by the Museum of Civilization – similar to the Smithsonian in the USA, walked along a great trail along the river with great views of the parliament. We passed by the more contemporary museum, complete with spider sculpture, which is right across the street from a beautiful church…. Uummm, ok, that’s almost as bad as the US Embassy in the old district! We continued our walk past Mark’s work and tried to get him to flash us from his office, but he wasn’t answering his phone (he probably knew better!). We continued on down over the bridge and past the French and English and other embassy’s. We stopped in front of the Prime Minister’s house….yeah, that’s right, in front of his house! And admired the grounds and Matt said his kids would play Frisbee out in front of the house sometimes… This is about the time when you realize that you are indeed in another country! We didn’t have a chance to go into the grounds of the Governor General’s Estate, but it is, again, open to the public!
We met up with Mark as he was getting out of work and headed back towards home. Matt and Mark decided a bus ride was in order as folks were getting tired of walking by this point. So we headed for the bus terminal, which is right in front of the Canadian equivalent of the US FBI or something similar! We hoped on a bus… without [this section has been removed to protect US-Canadian relations and reduce the likely hood of self-incrimination]. We arrived back at the house without being arrested or fined so all was good!
Off to the grocery store for a rotisserie chicken (no time for cooking, there is partying to be done!) We ate and headed off to the old district to meet up with some friends of Matt and Mark.
Buzz is a really neat restaurant/bar that has Martini specials on Wednesday night! We met Simon, Evan, Henry and then the Martini’s started kicking in and we cannot collectively remember who else was there, although I do remember she had a really great set of hooters! (gee, can you tell Adam is typing this now?) After downing 4 martini’s – my favorite was the Apple Pie Martini, Tony liked the Buzz best. (http://thebuzzrestaurant.ca/page6/martini.html).
After the Buzz we headed to another bar, Tony thinks it was the Centre Town Pub for a drink and some more great conversation. Adam and Evan and Henry had a great talk about the same sex marriage issue in the US vs. Canada.
On Thursday, Tony and I worked on getting dinner prepped as we debated what to do for the day. We decided to head out to China Town for another little shopping trip.
Matt had some wine...a bottle that is, as Tony and Adam were doing the mixed drinks. When Marc got home we had teriyaki chicken, brown rice and broccoli.
After supper we headed out for a few hours to the Lookout (http://thelookoutbar.com). When we walked in both Marc and Adam took a moment to admire the bartender, he was a cutie! He was wearing… well, not much. We met Will, Marc’s backup boyfriend, according to Matt. Oh and did we mention that we were drinking? We all headed out to the dance floor where we met up with some more friends, Greg and Bradley. We continued drinking and dancing. Adam danced up on the speaker with a few people, got his face rubbed in some boobs. Sometime around 1:30Matt decided he really needed to get home so he could go to work the next day :)
Friday we picked up Matt from work and headed to get his hair cut and pick up a few things from the grocery store that we would need for the great Montreal Tour ’08. We decided we were way too tired to do anything Friday night and stayed in and enjoyed each other’s company. Tony and I made an oriental chicken salad. Matt went upstairs to check on something at about 8:30 and that is the last we heard from him til the morning! The rest of it made it until almost 10 before we crashed!
The crazy black squirrels of Ottawa. Solar heat gain?
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