Ottawa, CA
I spent most of (last) Sunday getting ready for the TAG face-to-face meeting, but sometime late in the afternoon, I decided it was time to check out the sites in Ottawa.
I spent most of (last) Sunday getting ready for the TAG face-to-face meeting, but sometime late in the afternoon, I decided it was time to check out the sites in Ottawa.
I wandered from my hotel up towards Rideau Falls. I had planned to stop at Rideau Hall to see a performance of Governor General’s Summer Concert Series, but the combination of a late start and a little bit of geographic disorentation conspired against me.
Paul had suggested taking a cab to the venue and walking back, to avoid just such an accident, but I didn't heed his advice. Stuart had called me that morning from Heathrow and we'd arranged to have dinner that evening. I didn't want to miss my walk, so I tried to do that first.
Stuart's call is another example of a modern marvel. Consider that my father remembers a time when there was one phone in his whole neighborhood and a voyage to England would have taken many weeks.
Stuart typed my mobile number into his phone, a litle gadget no bigger than a deck of cards, and my phone, sitting on the nightstand next to the bed in my hotel room in Ottawa, some 260 or so miles from my home, rang a few seconds later. We chatted for a few minutes and arranged to have dinner later that very day, more than 3000 miles from his location at the time. I am trying not to become jaded to such marvels.
In fact, Stuart, Tim, and I had a nice dinner at Mama Teresa's. I try to find local cuisine when I travel and I can attest that Ontario makes a very nice red; a Merlot, I think.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I explored Ottawa. I walked past the parliament where the eternal flame burns.
The flame burns in the center of a fountain, which is both beautiful and surprising.
Beyond parliament, I passed a set of locks. I haven't seen locks since The South of France and it was warmly nostalgic to watch the boats going through them.
Between the locks and the falls, I passed the Royal Mint.
The mint plays a role in the Magnifi-Mint Cache.
Without a boat, it's hard to get a real frontal view of Rideau Falls, Ottawa's exemplary curtain falls.
On the way back from the falls, I decided to do a little geocaching. I located Magnifi-Mint behind the Royal Mint (I picked up SR-71 Blackbird, a travel bug bound for the Panama Canal). Weaving my way back to the road from behind the mint, I found myself in front of Ottawa’s Notre Dame Basilica.
From there, I made a half-hearted attempt to locate Baking Bread, but I gave up when the GPS seemed to take me inside a mall. With a little persistence, maybe I could have figured it out.
Along the way, I passed another Elephant and Castle. There's one in Boston near where I stayed last time I had meetings there, but it didn't have a pub sign.
I also passed Terre des hommes, a sculpture from the ’67 Expo.
I tried to find the O Canada cache too, back around the parliament buildings. I managed to get most of the clues (all but the corner clue, in fact), but it was getting near dinner time and the siren song of a soft seat and a cold beer back in the hotel was loud in my ears. Maybe next time.
One consequence of my search was that I looked at the parliament buildings very carefully. They are festooned with intricate carvings, ranging from whimisical to regal and stopping on most places in between.
Very definitely worth a closer look. As are the “cats” on the hill.
Across the street, and at the other end of the architectural spectrum, modern Ottawa.
I didn't scratch the surface of things to do. In my short, casual walk, I passed a modern photography museum that looked interesting, a museum of art, and as John noticed, I ended this sentence with a comma when I first posted the essay, so I must have had other things in mind. Alas, I no longer recall what they were.