Ottawa 3, Ontario, Canada

 We are still in the same place although if the rain continues to beat down at it’s current rate we may be down stream a mile or two before the day is over.  There are little rivers of water running down each side of the roads in this RV park.  Of course we are on a bit of a hill so the water isn’t puddling to bad – however there could be a lake at the bottom of the hill.

We saw a saying today that said, “We did everything today and tomorrow we’ll do everything else.”

That was pretty much how the last two days went. We saw a lot of sights on the on/off bus tour yesterday including the Canadian History Museum. Today we saw more sights on the “Splash” tour and spent time on the Ottawa River. We drove into town early to wait in line for free tickets for a tour of the parliament buildings. It was interesting to compare the structure of the Canadian and American governments. Of course the main difference is that Canada is a “Constitutional Monarchy.”

While standing in line we met a young Polish couple that now live in Connecticut. The other person ahead of us was an attorney living in Syracuse. We arrived about 8:00 am to get tickets with an English speaking guide. We spent more time today walking in the city. We heard many languages, but the predominant one was French. I heard Spanish a few times. One family lived in Montreal but was originally from Argentina.

As Peter indicated, we were not able to include pics on our blog yesterday and today and we’re having more difficulties with WiFi. Hopefully we’ll have better luck at our site in Quebec City. We also have not watched TV or heard much radio. Consequently, we are out of touch with what is going on which is probably a good thing.
Thanks for all the suggestions for mosquito repellent. Some were pretty interesting. Rob, I wish we had some marigolds handy…

We will visit two more places in Quebec, then start our tour of the Maritime Provinces. We’ll start with New Brunswick, then Nova Scotia.

We were fortunate to have two marvelous days of sunshine. However tomorrow it’s supposed to rain a lot. We’ll be staying closer to home.
Bonne nuit. JY

We are currently experiencing some difficulties loading pictures into the blog and publishing our posts. I am trying to work through it but so far haven’t had too much luck. One night it works like a charm and the next night it’s a struggle from the moment you turn on the computer – of all the places we have been this has been the most frustrating. I’m blaming the mosquitoes.

The weather today was great – even a little hotter than yesterday but clouds were on the distant horizon preparing for tomorrows assault. There is heavy rain in the forecast for the next 3 to 4 days. Even with the rain we are going back into the city and look up some of my old haunts and neighborhoods – if they are still there.

Today we were in line at 8:00 am to get tickets for a tour of the parliament buildings. The doors for the tickets opened at 9:00 and we were second in line and scored free tickets for the first English tour of the morning. There were about 15 in our tour group and it was a pretty good mix of cultures and ethnicities – exactly what Canada is. We visited the House of Commons and the Senate – the history of the parliament buildings is fascinating – all but the library burned to the ground in 1916. There was a lot of wood used in the original construction so they decided to use sandstone when they rebuilt it.

We tried to go for coffee at the Chateau Laurier but the café was closed. So we went over to the ByWard Market for lunch. This was a big weekend for races and marathons. Saturday was the 2K, 5K, 10K and 20K runs and today was the full marathon (26 miles). There must have been at least 10,000 people running the race – as they went by us we saw at least 3 blind people with companions and/or guide dog. In places it was difficult to cross the road – it reminded me of a line of ants we saw in Central America.

PRC

P.S. This is the blog post from yesterday – tried to publish it last night but it failed to publish – got up this morning and “boom” everything is working fine – go figure.

It is still a torrential rainstorm outside – now we know what Noah felt like when he was in the ark – our RV is our ark