After a relaxing morning with breakfast in the apartment, we walked to Second Cup for coffee. Owen was playing with my camera and took a picture of me.  I don’t get to be the subject very often in my family.

Then we proceeded to the Canadian Museum of Nature –  a pleasant 20 minute walk south on Metcalfe Street.  It wasn’t possible to get lost as Metcalfe leads directly to the museum’s front door, which is exactly one mile south of  Parliament Hill. Our Royal Ontario Museum pass allowed us free entry and we needed only to purchase tickets to the movie and lunch in the excellent museum cafeteria.

The building is quite striking.  It was built between  1901 and 1910, as a tribute to Queen Victoria whose 64 year reign ended in 1901.  It was called the Victoria Memorial Museum Building when it opened. The architecture was intended to mirror the Centre Block of the original Parliament Buildings. It was the first building in Canada created to house a national museum. In 1915, due to sinking that began during construction, the tower had to be removed. The building has been home to many different museums and served as the emergency headquarters of the Canadian government from 1916-1920, after the Parliament Buildings, other than the library, were destroyed by fire.  The building was extensively renovated from 2004-2010 and a new glass tower was added to pay homage to the original stone one.

We began, as Michael likes to do, on the top floor and worked our way down.  There is a wonderful double, entwined staircase in the glass tower. The lighting wasn’t ideal in the cube during this visit so I processed these images from when we were at the museum with Megan and Alun in August 2016. I didn’t take the time to blog about that trip to Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa.  I will have to try to do so.

This time, there was a giant, jellyfish-like inflatable in the cube.

The movie was Museum Alive 3D, set in the Natural History Museum in London, England with naturalist David Attenborough, who encounters extinct animals that move, interact, and make sound. It was cute.

The fourth floor contained the Arctic Gallery with some fun exhibits. One had images of the arctic projected on large blocks of ice and was quite striking.

Another gallery had wonderful displays of butterflies and insects – alive and preserved.

Funny how older children continue to be attracted to displays aimed at much younger ones.  Here’s Owen on this visit, and Megan and Alun on their visit last year, in the ambulance at the veterinary hospital display.

 

There were many interactive stations which the boys enjoyed.

I enjoyed the mineral section.  I wish I had had my tripod.  Some of them were quite beautiful.

There was a section with huge dioramas of mammals.

We took a break for lunch, at which I had a delicious giant salad.

Then we visited the water gallery and fossil gallery.

Outside they had some woolly mammoth figures.

On the way back we walked on Elgin where we saw posts covered in thousands of staples from old notices and a bakery trying to entice people away from the coffee shop across the street with this sign.  Mmmm cookies.

We let the boys go back to the apartment and we continued walking to the National Gallery, passing the National War Memorial and the Chateau Laurier, a closed staircase access to the canal, the American Embassy, looking fortified, Reconciliation: The Peacekeeping Monument and then Byward Market on the way back to the apartment. I wanted to see Stephen Wilkes’ Ottawa, Canada 150, Day to Night, 2017, which was available for viewing in the lobby of the National Gallery – no admission required. It was great to see it printed in large format.  Check out his Day to Night series.  It’s amazing.

It was blue hour when we got back to the apartment so I set up my tripod and did a long exposure of the view.

We decided to get Subway for dinner and eat in the room. It was quite cold out but I just ran out the front door of the lobby, around the corner and into the Subway, without a coat.  On our way back into the lobby, someone revealed to me that there is an unmarked door between the two and I needn’t have gone outside. I finished the day supervising Owen in the pool.  Michael and Trystan watched bad commercial television in the room.

On our final morning, we packed, took our belongings to the can in the underground garage, and tidied the apartment (quick vacuum, wipe the counters/table, start the dishwasher) to avoid a cleaning charge.

We walked to Second Cup for our coffee then returned for the car.  On our way out of Ottawa we stopped at Rideau Hall, the Governor General’s residence, and while 24 Sussex Drive is under renovation, the Prime Minister’s residence in behind Rideau Hall in Rideau Cottage.  As one explores the grounds and approaches Rideau Hall there is no sense of security personnel.   It was only as I walked to the left of Rideau Hall and approached a small sign stating, “No Public Access” that a security guard, not obviously armed, stepped out of a hut and pointed out the sign.  At that point I was within a few metres of Rideau Hall and a few hundred metres of Rideau Cottage.

I like the fact that security is not obvious and overwhelming.

It was a delightful weekend getaway and I would definitely consider using Corporate Stay apartments in future.

 

 

 

I’ve never lived in an apartment building so the occasional time I am up high I really enjoy the views. Today I watched workers at City Hall begin to lay down layers of ice on the circle at Centre-left with a fire hose like I used to do in Carabram Park.

 

We ate breakfast in the apartment then headed over to the Parliament Visitors Centre. When we were here with Megan and Alun the line stretched down the block for the free tour tickets. Today, we walked right up to the counter and had our choice of times. We chose 1020 and then went for coffee.

We were able to see the partially constructed ice rink on the front lawn, but it doesn’t open while we are here.

 

We took a walk around to the library and views of the Ottawa River, then went through the airport style security before assembling for our tour.

 

We saw the House of Commons (green), Senate (red) and library on the tour.

 

 

The doors to the House of Commons and senate.

 

Various hallways were nicely decorated for Christmas.

 

Climbing up the stairs to the Peace Tower elevator affords a nice view of the ceiling of the main entrance to the Centre Block.

 

We took the elevator up to the top of the Peace Tower and saw the Memorial Chapel for soldiers killed in combat. The views from the Tower were good. Unfortunately, it was rather overcast. The Centre Block is going to be closing for renovations that will take 10 years to complete. The West Block is having what was an outdoor courtyard covered with a glass dome to house the House of Commons, seen in the first picture below from the Peace Tower. The Senate will be moving to the old train station across from the Château Laurier. This is scheduled to happen next September, so if you’re thinking of visiting the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings, there are only 10 months left to visit before it will close for 10 years.

Here’s the controversial hockey rink being built for the Canada150 Celebrations.

 

Next we went to the currency museum. It used to be on Spark Street, quite unassuming and mainly focused on displaying banknotes and coins. It’s now called the Bank of Canada Museum and has a specially built building on Bank Street. At the moment the building seems rather overbuilt for the amount of displays they have, and has less of a focus on notes and coins, which is what interested Michael last time we visited. It was definitely worth the price of admission, though – free!

 

After that we returned to the apartment, via Spark Street, where we found one of those name signs that seems to be becoming ubiquitous, and past City Hall.  We bought lunch downstairs and ate in the apartment. I tried Freshii, which I quite enjoyed. Michael and the kids had Subway.

We spent the afternoon walking around exploring.  Near our apartment is a great spiral staircase from the Laurier Avenue W bridge over the Rideau Canal down to the Rideau Canal Eastern Pathway.

Byward Market had a AWATTO sign.

We went to see Louise Bourgeois’ giant 9.25-metre-tall spider Maman at the National Gallery, and walked around the gallery to discover some of their other outdoor pieces including one called Majestic by Canadian artist Michel de Broin which is an array of revitalized New Orleans streetlamps, uprooted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

We also visited Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica where the late afternoon sunlight through the stained glass was making rainbows on the stone columns.

After that we walked through Byward Market to find that the wonderful Sash Gelato which we visited twice when we were in Ottawa with Megan and Alun, had closed so we just picked up a few groceries at the Metro and headed back to the apartment.

We chose a nearby all you can eat (AYCE) sushi restaurant for dinner, but unfortunately didn’t want to eat all that we had ordered.  We all agreed it was the worst sushi we had ever had, possibly with the exception of an AYCE Sushi restaurant I went to in the small southern Ontario town of St. Thomas. Definitely avoid Sushi Village if you are in the area. It really only would have been worse if it had resulted in food poisoning.

After our disappointing dinner, we walked back to the hotel.  Tonight only Owen braved the tepid pool.

Michael and I each had a bath to soothe our sore feet and legs.  We had left the car parked under the apartment and walked everywhere.  Ottawa is such a great city for cycling and walking.  The distances, while longer than I am used to walking at home, are quite manageable. Having said that, I get the sense that Ottawa isn’t quite as Active Transportation (AT) friendly in the winter as the summer.  Many paths and staircases were blocked.  I assume the city doesn’t want to spend the money shovelling snow and ice.  We saw many signs like this.

There were far more bikes parked in the garage under our apartment than cars and many empty car parking spots. The picture below shows only one of more than half a dozen bike parking areas.

 

In July, I took the train to Ottawa.  It was my first time on VIA Rail. I enjoyed it immensely. Michael and I drove to David and Dayle’s house to pick them up, then onto Rani’s.  Rani drove us downtown to Union Station and her brother, who lives downtown, drove  the car home for her. We left home at 10:45 and arrived at our residence in Ottawa at 6:20 for a total travel time of 7:35. We could have shaved off about half an hour, but then we might have run the chance of missing the train. It cost me $68 (not including the cost of the car portions of the trip) one way.

When I began planning this family trip I looked into taking the train, but it turned out to be much more costly and time consuming than driving.

We would have had to take Brampton Transit ($22.80, four people, two ways, Presto cards), GO Train (Family Pass 2x$35), Via Rail ($786.48) and Ottawa Transit ($26.80, four people, two ways, Presto cards).

The direct costs of taking our car included gas ($110), tolls ($58) and parking for 3 nights ($33).

Using the CAA Driving Costs Calculator ** for my minivan I determined that a fully loaded rate, including insurance, repairs, gas and depreciation is $0.58 per kilometre.

*Taking the car allowed us to take a side trip to Brockville to see Canada’s first train tunnel which is newly reopened as a cycling and pedestrian attraction and is included in the total trip time of 6.5 hours.

Driving was a no-brainer, even for someone like me that tries to minimize my driving and even though we did not drive the entire time we were in Ottawa. It took less time, gave us more flexibility for sightseeing on travel days, and cost dramatically less money.

I imagine, but did not investigate, that even had we rented a car and paid for insurance, it would have cost less than taking transit.

If one considers only the direct costs of driving it would have been cheaper to drive even if only one person was in the car! And for two people it is essentially a wash between fully costed driving and transit.

Even if we had paid a $0.29 per kilometre toll (the amount paid on the provincial portion of the 407 and 412) for the entire trip (964km*$0.29), it would have only added just over an additional $200 to our driving costs.

Unless the cost of driving is deliberately and dramatically increased, how can we hope to motivate enough people to stop driving to make a difference to congestion and greenhouse gas emissions?