Sarah and Ian's Move to Ottawa

The story so far...having planned and booked a three month trip to South America, we were given a difficult decision to make when Ian was offered a job in Canada. After much hard thinking, we took the job, but get the best of both worlds as we still have two weeks in Brazil and Chile before arriving in Ottawa. We are now living in Ottawa and enjoying the big adventure of living somewhere new. This is the story of our experience...

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Cinemicrobes

We’ve had a couple of quiet(ish) weeks recently. Last weekend we had a lovely meal and evening round my boss’s and on the Saturday I played golf and Sarah went to the spa with her friend Trish and had a fantastic massage. Not with Trish!

On Friday, Sarah’s university friend Katie and her friend Jill arrived. Sarah met Katie and Jill at the airport and after some lunch they walked to Dow’s Lake and went canoeing. I met them after work as they were paddling back to the marina. We had dinner at home as Katie and Jill were tired after the flight.

This is their first visit to Canada and as they are here for two weeks they are going to hire a car and do some touring. Toronto, Montreal and Quebec are more appealing than watching Sarah and I come home from work each day!

Katie and Jill spent the weekend with us and we showed them round Ottawa and across the river in Quebec. We started on Saturday with a walk around Parliament hill. Sarah and I have been to parliament many times, but had not walked around the grounds. The first stop was the cat hotel that Sarah had read about in the guide recently. It was started by a man in the 1970s as an answer to the stray cat problem and was kept running after the man died. The cats are so well fed that they don’t chase off squirrels that eat from the same bowls. We also saw statues of past Prime Ministers and the whispering wall, which doesn’t actually whisper itself but if you sit at one end and whisper into the curved way you will be heard at the other end of the wall.

After Parliament, Katie and Jill wanted to look round the national gallery so Sarah and I did our favourite weekend activity and ignored each other over hot chocolate and the newspaper for a couple of hours.

We met up with Katie and Jill and the four of us had dinner at Ritz in the Byward market (review to come from Katie and Jill). After dinner we walked back to Parliament to see the Sound & Light show, an advertisement for all things Canadian projected onto the façade of Parliament.

On Sunday we drove over to Gatineau Park. We take all our guests to Pink Lake in the park because it is very picturesque and there is a nice walk in the forest. However, there had been a rock slide and the walk around Pink Lake was closed! Our tour was ruined. Venturing into the unknown we drove further into the national park. I had noticed that Champlain Lookout had three symbols of a man looking through a telescope. Three symbols! It must be a very beautiful view, so we headed in that direction. We didn’t know how far the drive was and rather than bore our guests we stopped short going to Champlain when we saw a sign for Huron lookout. The view here looked out over the Ottawa valley with the river below us and we could see to Vancouver (nearly). Heading back out of the park we stopped off at King Mountain and walked the 40 minute trail around and over the mountain. We had hoped to see beaver, deer, moose or bears on the trail but only saw a millipede, several grasshoppers and a baby red squirrel (photos 9g. Ottawa).

Back in Ottawa we all went to the Canadian War museum. Katie and Jill wanted to look round as much as possible as this would be their only chance to see it but as Sarah and I can visit anytime we have decided to view the museum slowly doing one series of exhibits at a time. This time we did Canada in World War I. There were some gruesome stories of life in the trenches and of the effects of mustard gas and shrapnel shells. I liked the displays that show how particular battles were fought.

In the evening we went to a North American tradition, the drive in cinema to see The Island. It took us about half an hour trying all sorts of combinations before we realised that there was no way that all four of us could sit in the front of our little car, so we decided we’d swap during the film. That didn’t quite happen though because as the sun went down the bugs came out and we had to close our windows so we didn’t get bitten. We missed part of the film because the windscreen steamed up because of four people being in the car with the windows closed. It also got very hot in the car so eventually we gave up and opened the windows to let the air and the bugs in. This was still better than chatty teenagers sitting in front of you in a regular cinema.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Guest Restaurant Review

We're doing the restaurant review in Katie and Jill's absence. If they want to make any additional comments, let us know.

It was a really warm evening, so we sat outside at Ritz in the Byward Market. They do really good Italian dishes. We had a platter of antipasta of different salamis, cheeses and olives. Katie and Jill had pizzas for their main course whilst Sarah and I had pasta. All were really tasty. We enjoyed sitting on the veranda and people watching in the market. The only negative was the extortionate price of the sip of grand marnier in a huge glass.

We would still go back again.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Well Dressed Cruise

Today we took a drive out to Kingstown about two hours from Ottawa along the St. Lawrence river at the mouth of Lake Ontario. Sarah had been to Kingston a couple of times previously with her parents and wanted to show me the nice little town. We had a wander around the high street, the market and the cathedral and then had lunch at the micro-brewery, where they brew beers with names like Dragon’s Breath Ale and Pooh’s Beer.

After lunch we took the three hour boat cruise of the 1000 islands, home of the salad dressing. The cruise was interesting as the commentator pointed out some the islands history as a strategic location during the 1812 war and as a great place to run bootleg liquor to the States during prohibition. It was beautiful when we got into the waterways between the smaller islands. Some of the islands were only a few feet square, just big enough for one luxury house. It might have been all the fresh air or maybe it was just all too much for her, because Sarah had a little sleep on the boat!

Sarah’s Aunt and Uncle have recently moved to a house just outside Kingston and after the cruise we dropped by for a nice dinner and to see their new place. It is lovely and is huge and very green at the moment! We had just finished dinner when the lights went out and we heard a crack of thunder. We decided it was time to head home and we managed to stay ahead of the storm (even though we stopped for hot chocolate on the way!).

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Midweek, musical, mini-mosh

We saw another Canadian sight tonight. Not a moose. Not a bear or a beaver. Tonight we saw Avril Lavigne in concert. Before the concert, I hadn’t realised that Avril’s target audience is pre- and early teenagers. Sarah and I were the oldest people there not chaperoning their kids. I found out I am completely out of touch with the latest trends. I saw all the kids buying sealed plastic test-tubes of illuminous liquids. “They’re no fun”, I thought, “They don’t do anything”. The kids knew better though because once the lights gone down, the arena filled with specks of florescent light. It was the safety conscious, child friendly answer to waving a cigarette lighter at a rock concert, though the green colour of the lights made it look like we were under attack from giant glow-worms.

The kids need to learn a thing or two about rock concerts as there was no pushing and shoving at the front by the stage. Everyone just listened attentively, waved their test-tubes and screamed hysterically when a song finished. We showed our rock ‘n’ roll side by sitting in the third level seating and tapping our feet to the beat.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Pull the Other One

A couple of weeks ago Sarah was getting a lot of bad headaches. She noticed that one of her wisdom teeth had come through and booked an appointment at the dentist. The dentist said the tooth was the cause of Sarah’s headaches and would have to be removed because it was growing at an awkward angle. He worked at several different surgeries and as he didn’t have an appointment in Ottawa until August, we booked an appointment for today at his other surgery in Napanee, a mere two hours drive. Oh and the appointment was at eight thirty in the morning.

I had the day off work as Sarah would have to have a general anaesthetic and would be dopier than she is normally after the surgery. The operation went without a hitch and the dental nurse said Sarah was a very good patient. They say that anaesthetic acts like being hypnotised and patients will say what they really think. Whilst unconscious and with a dentist grappling to remove a tooth at the back of her mouth, Sarah said “I want something to eat”.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

He’s a Mountie and he’s OK

Friday was a bank holiday in Canada. Yippee a short working week! The official name for the holiday is Canada Day and it’s when all Canadians celebrate their country. Being the country’s capital, Ottawa puts on a big party lasting the whole day. Four of the cities parks were used as venues for hosting activities and concerts and the central roads were closed to traffic. There was no way we could get round to see it all so we picked out a few highlights. Even so our day started at 8:15am watching the parade go past Parliament and ended at 11pm with the fireworks show. A very busy day.

The parade had the usual military bands playing, but also had gymnastics groups, unicyclists (they don’t have two wheeled bikes in Canada) and groups representing populations from across the country. After the parade had past, we stayed on Parliament Hill and watched the governor general attending the flag raising. From there we headed against the flow of the crowds and went to see a celtic band called Celtae from Nova Scotia. The organisers had made use of the stage erected for the Jazz festival but had not covered up the signs saying no photography. We weren’t sure we had the correct venue or if we needed tickets and I think a lot of other people had the same thought as the crowd was small to begin with. No matter. Celtae were really good. They were passionate about their music and their culture and this came across in their lively performance. They got the crowd going with some hand-clapping, foot-tapping, jig dancing songs about Irishmen coming off the wagon after being sober for fourteen years and how it is a tough life making a living from ocean fishing.

After the concert we headed back to Parliament Hill to see a concert by Canadian artists from other provinces and to see the governor general and prime minister receive a 21 artillery gun salute – that woke the crowds up – and fly past by the Snow Birds, the Canadian equivalent of the British Red Arrows. People were packed onto the hill outside parliament now as rumours had gone round the city that the first maple leaf flag had returned to Ottawa and would be presented at a ceremony. The maple leaf was chosen as Canada’s flag in 1965 and the first flag raised over parliament was given to the speaker of the House of Commons when he retired. He sadly passed away and his Belgian wife return to her home land taking the maple leaf flag with her. There had been lots of muted anger (Canadians don’t get outrageous) about this in the newspapers this week. Happily the rumours were correct and the prime minister received the flag and presented it to the crowd.

After a quick Chinese lunch we went across the river to Gatineau to see a lumberjack show. I feel almost embarrassed that we’ve been in Canada for five months and I haven’t made a single lumberjack reference. I haven’t even thought about them. There were checked shirts and sawdust and axes flying everywhere and yet not a sign of high heels or buttered scones for tea. No mention of shopping either, but then it wasn’t a Wednesday. Seriously though, they were very skilful at axe throwing, wood chopping, tree climbing and log rolling, just like their dear papa.

There was supposed be a lasso training event after the lumberjacks. It was meant for the kids, so of course I joined in. I didn’t get much tuition though as five minutes in a dark cloud came overhead and they closed all events because a thunderstorm was expected. I did manage to tickle the stationery replica of a bull with my lasso, probably just enough to antagonise a real bull.

We walked back to Ottawa side of the river and got drenched in the downpour. We decided to head home as we were very tired and thought most events would be closed due to the rain. We both fell asleep on the sofa for half an hour, which was a lovely snooze. We decided that we’d drive back into town to see the fireworks show and get takeaway pizza on the way. We had hard time finding parking and couldn’t decide whether to watch the show from the Ottawa or Quebec side of the river. We ran out of time so decided on the Ottawa side and walked to Major’s Hill, expecting the fireworks to light up Parliament. They didn’t. Instead they lit up over the river (though this would have been over Parliament had we been on the Quebec side – D’oh!). Still it was a good show. They even had some fireworks that exploded into heart shapes! I didn’t know shaped fireworks were possible. Fantastic!

On Saturday we had a relaxing morning, watched War of the Worlds at the cinema and then went to watch the Royal Canadian Mounted Police musical ride. We were expecting maybe half an hour of mounties riding round on horses watched by maybe a hundred people. Instead there were a couple of thousand people most with picnic hampers and fold away chairs. We had no food and were going to have to stand. The show lasted nearly two hours! There were dogs doing exercise tricks, police shooting targets whilst on horseback and of course the mounties riding formations. It was a very entertaining show. Oh, I especially liked the musical interlude. A famous French Canadian singer sung two children’s songs, one in French and one in Native American, but the best part was that they got one of the mounties to wear a mounty-beaver costume and dragged lots of bemused, embarrassed kids on stage too. The woman made lots of odd animal noises too. Apparently they were part of the songs. Bizarre. Sarah nearly wet herself.