A family Day long weekend in February gave us the chance to head to the capital city of Ottawa. This is one place I really wanted to get to in winter to be able to skate on the Rideau Canal a World Heritage Site and the world's largest skating rink. We were there also for the last weekend of the 3 week winter carnival 'winterlude'.
We had been having some beautiful sunny days (I'm hardly going to call them warm :-) but sunny none the less, and lots of snow had stated to melt so unfortunately many of the ice and snow sculptures had started to melt, even the canal was closed for skating on the Saturday :-(
There was plenty to do though, after a much needed sleep in (the 5 hour bus trip from Toronto Friday afternoon saw us arriving in the early hours of Saturday morning) we head out for a walk around the city. Byward Market is a great place for shopping and eating! We also walked to the Parliament Building and the National Art Gallery.
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| A view of Byward Market |
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| The toffee apples you can buy | at the market! |
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| Chocolate covered brownie on a stick - OMG! |
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| .... Yumminess on a stick! |
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| Our youth hostel used the be an old jail! |
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| Parliament. |
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| View of the Parliament and the frozen Ottawa river. |
Luckily for us it was freezing cold Saturday and even snowed over night which meant the canal was open Sunday! Yay! That also meant everyone in Ottawa for the long weekend was also skating on the canal. Although it was busy and we lined up for hours to hire skates - it was worth it! It was such a magical experience to think you were skating on a canal! Heading to Ottawa also gave us a chance to sample the famous Canadian 'Beaver tails! A beaver tail is a doughnut (only in the shape of a beaver tail) with what topping you wish, cinnamon, lemon and sugar, nutella and my favourite ... maple butter and chocolate sauce - OMG!
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| I've done it! Skated on the Rideau Canal :-) |
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| Everyone else also skating on the canal :-) |
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| Eating our 'Beaver Tail' while skating on the canal - truly Canadian! |
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| Beaver Tails - must be tried when in Canada |
Before heading back to Toronto Monday afternoon we managed to visit the very impressive Museum of Civilization - such a great set up and amazing things to see.
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| It's tough being a tourist - needing to rest our legs! |
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| View of Ottawa and the river from the museum |
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