Ottawa

We've been in Ottawa for a little over a day now. It's more like what I expected Canada to be - a bit hilly, clean, and VERY green.

The Tulip Festival is on at the moment, so there's tulips everywhere. Plus, today is Victoria Day, so the parks and tourist spots were extra busy with people enjoying the sun on their day off. We ended up at Parliament House just before midday, and came across about 2 dozen soldiers and 4 big artillery guns just beside the Centre Block. After asking at the information tent we found they were doing a 21 gun salute at midday for Victoria Day, so we hung around to watch that. They weren't quite as loud as I thought they would be (considering they shoot maybe 5" shells!) but they were still loud enough to echo around the city and leave pretty much every single young child in tears.

We couldn't do a guided tour of Parliament, so we just wandered around the grounds for a while and admired the view before continuing on through the city. It's such a lovely city to look at that we spent most of the afternoon just admiring the views. We went into the mint, but as with Parliament we couldn't do a tour, so we just checked out the gift shop and a couple of little exhibits they have.

It's going to be a shame to leave tomorrow. I'm sure Toronto couldn't be as nice as Ottawa is. It's a bit of a drive to Toronto - at least 4 hours, probably closer to 5 - so we're not going to be able to hang around too long tomorrow before heading off.