OH, OTTAWA! WHO KNEW?

We left Toronto in the morning after breakfast for the haul up to Ottawa, Canada’s capital.  When I first saw the itinerary for this tour, I wondered why we were to spend two nights in Ottawa and only one in Montreal.  Capital cities are generally not the most interesting places.  Turns out, the tourmeister knew what she was doing.  Ottawa turned out to be a gem, and well worth the extra night.

The plan of the day called for us to proceed directly upon arrival to Ottawa’s leading attraction, the Museum of Civilization, then go to the hotel afterward.  Nothing much to report about the drive up.  More bare trees, endless fields, and not much of interest.  The Museum, on the other hand, was way cool, starting with the wavy structure.  And, of course, all the signs being in French.  But, wait, you say.  Ottawa is in Ontario, where English rules.  Correct, grasshopper, but the Museum lies across the river in the town of Gatineau, which is in Quebec Province.  The wavy structure allegedly sprang from native lore which holds that evil spirits reside in right-angle corners.  Supposedly, there are no right angle walls in the entire structure.  That might be stretching it a bit, but most everything did indeed look curvy.

This applied as well to the inside walls.  Here’s the great entry hall, which contains a bunch of totem poles and other native carvings.  The exterior wall columns are designed to look like upright canoe paddles.  One of the totems featured a bow and arrow, a carving feature I haven’t seen before.  I particularly liked this bag, made out of porcupine quills about 100 years ago!

One display was a re-creation of a native meeting house which used these fantastic carved pillars to hold up the walls and roof.  I think I’d get the creeps if those eyes were staring at me all the time.  At the right is a drawing of an interior.

As we only had a few hours at the museum, we moved through rather quickly.  This easily is an all-day destination, or multiple days if you really get into it.  We enjoyed the full-scale false buildings and streets that recreate actual venues from the provincial past, but there are hundreds and hundreds of smaller exhibits that are fascinating.

There is one floor-wing that is devoted to a children’s museum, with lots of hands-on things for them to do.  Very liberal, these Canadians -- the Ken Kesey bus must trip out a lot of kids.  The postal museum was a little more staid, but interesting.

Through the windows on one side of the museum you can see the back of the Parliament buildings on the bluff across the river.  The rounded one in the foreground is a library.  In the left corner is a peek at our hotel.  Part of what made Ottawa so neat was that you could really walk to most everything of interest, in a beautiful setting.

This is the same view, taken just outside the museum.  In the rift between the Parliament buildings on the right, and our hotel, on the left, is a seven-lock canal that once lifted boats up from the river. 

It’s all for looks, however, as wherever the canal once led to is long gone and paved over.  While in Canada, we’re staying at all Fairmont hotels.  This one (on the left) is the Fairmont Chateau Laurier, one of the hotels erected by the Canadian Railways to encourage travel.

Before going to the hotel, we headed off to dinner at the grand buffet of the Casino du Lac-Leamy.  The buffet was OK, especially as it was seafood night, but nothing was really worth taking a picture of, even the three desserts that I pigged into my pie hole.  I did like the décor of the room where we ate.  OK, we gotta have a food pic, so here’s breakfast (well, part of it anyway) the next morning at the hotel.  We didn’t always get to eat at the Fairmont hotels for breakfast (about $27, included in our tour price), but when we did it was a treat.  They really did things up right. 

The next morning was devoted to a local guide tour.  One of the reasons for scheduling Ottawa was for the tulip festival, which was just getting under way in a beautiful walking park.

We were told that, because of the weird early spring in March that the midwest and east had this year, followed by a cold snap, many of the tulips are not performing.  You couldn’t tell it by these beds, which were dazzling.

So how did Ottawa become the site of an annual tulip festival?  Glad you asked.  It entails a bit of history, best explained on these plaques. 

I wasn’t aware of all the colors that tulips come in.  This bed was my favorite.

I also put the macro setting to use on these beauties:

Part of the tour was to the Parliament buildings, but only the exteriors.  They are situated smack in the middle of town, on that promontory overlooking the river.  The front of the complex is a large U-shape, the center with the clock tower (their local Big Ben),

sporting gargoyles, and two wings which house the members of Parliament.

Our guide was Terry, who was born not far from Ottawa in a small town, and an ex-schoolteacher and principal (in the sunglasses and striped shirt).  He was very enthusiastic about his town, critical of the “do-nothing and see if it works out” attitude of Canadian politicians, and curiously praising of what he admired as the “can-do” American spirit.  Frankly, I think Canada works a lot better than America does at this point.

Ottawa has some rather pretty waterfalls close by.  I saw a kayaker hovering in the waters above these, but he didn’t make a go at it.

Samuel de Champlain is a big deal in these parts, sort of the father of his country, at least from the Quebecois’ point of view.  We came upon a number of statues of him as we traveled the province.  This one was the best of the lot.

We had the afternoon free to wander about.  Mom wanted to take a nap, so Loni & I took off on our own.  Ottawa might be filled with old classic buildings, but it has a whimsical side in its public artworks, these two in particular.  For the height perspective of the needle, note the kneeling woman photographing it on the right.  I wonder what effect the spider has on kids who walk by?  It sure creeped me out.

More traditional fare lay in the local basilica (right across the street from the spider), which sported a zinc roof that had a silver sheen.

As the plaque says, its chief glory is the painted interior.  It is rather stunning.  Those are not marble columns.

Our room had a view that looked down the street into the local café and pub district, which covers an area about five blocks square.

On a beautiful weekend day like we were enjoying, every pub and restaurant was packed, especially the outdoor seating.

Obama cookies?  He made a visit here a couple of years ago, and bought some cookies for his daughters at this local shop.  Quicker than you can blink, the proprietor immediately named them the “Obama Cookies.”  I peeked inside, but they didn’t look like anything special.  We scoped out a nice place for dinner and went back to fetch Mom.  Fortunately, it was in this district, just a block or so from the hotel, so she didn’t have to walk very far.

We really liked Ottawa, much more so than Toronto.  Ottawa had an intimate feel to it.  You really could just walk about an take in great scenery.

So, I won’t automatically discount capital cities in the future.  This one was cool.

TORONTO HIGH

On-off bus tour of the City today.  Toronto is not without its charming spots, but essentially it’s just a big city, cleaner than most, but not overly interesting.  First stop on our tour was the “Castle,” called Casa Loma, the former residence built in the 1930’s by financier Sir Henry Pellatt.  It has secret passages and an 800-ft tunnel to the stables.  Sadly, Sir Henry died more of a “Hank,” the result of his own business miscalculations and some dirty dealing by the Ontario government.  Henry lost the Casa, went bankrupt, and ended up just down the street in a basement flat along with his faithful butler.  We only did a drive-by so the pic is from the moving bus.

Next up was the Queen’s Quay harbor area which lies along Lake Ontario.  On the way, we passed some decidedly unclassic architecture grafted on to an older building.  There’s a bunch of stuff here like this, but it all seemed more gimmicky than thoughtful.

At the harbor, we did pile out of the bus to do a walkabout, and to patronize the local market.  Despite the scenic attractiveness, fishing is prohibited due to pollution.

Our guide was an erstwhile young guy who was trying w-a-y too hard with the jokes.  He was not deterred by falling flat repeatedly.  Tough audience, our tour group.  Here he’s pointing out some building that was covered with gold (the real deal) back before it went crazy.  Since Mom (foreground) can’t hear him anyway, she’s looking elsewhere.

Like virtually every area throughout Toronto, this neighborhood is filled with high-rise condos.  I swear 75% of the population lives in one.  The gold-covered (including a window film) building in the distance, behind the boat’s smokestack, was built by a Canadian bank.  Gold reflects sunlight quite well, so the building has very low air conditioning costs in the summer.  Not so great for the building across the street in the direct path of the reflected rays.  It’s owners sued because of its higher energy costs to run its own coolers.  They lost when the judge pointed out that they had lower costs for heating in the winter due to the same reflected light.

The dockside market reminded me of San Francisco’s Ferry Building market, only bigger and better.  Everything from butchers to baked goods to . . . Basmati?  Yup, a store devoted to selling only varieties of rice, most of which I’ve never heard of.

Toronto is home to a thriving film industry, poaching all sorts of productions from Hollywood and standing in for a variety of cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, etc.  A lot of stuff is filmed down in the old distillery district, where they’ve preserved all the old brick buildings and cobblestone streets.  Three Men and a Baby was filmed in the building on the right.  Others include Brokeback Mountain, A Christmas Story, Chicago, Good Will Hunting, etc.  On good-weather weekends, this place is packed with festivals, concerts, and the like.

Some of the juxtapositions of old and new in Toronto are pretty cool, like this one of the original “flatiron” building (that’s right, it predates the more famous NYC one) fronting the two skyscrapers (CN Tower at the extreme left).

Our tour ended at 2:00 and we all returned to the hotel.  Loni and I did a bit of walking around while Mom took a snooze, and came across this multi-pedal “march” for cancer.  They pedaled it around town with a police escort front and rear.

Like San Francisco, Toronto has trolley cars.  Lacking hills, no cable cars.  Los Angeles these days would kill not to have abandoned its trolleys back in the late 50’s.

Dinner this night was out of town at a place called The Old Mill Inn.  I think our tour is signed up for Early Bird Specials wherever we go, as we seem to be eating between 5 and 6 o’clock each day.  This place was nice enough, but, save for us, totally deserted.  Actually, the salmon was done quite well so, although no raves, no complaints either.

After dinner we went back to downtown Toronto for our visit to the CN Tower.  Our timing wasn’t so hot, as the sun had set and the low clouds were rolling in along with a few raindrops.  The CN Tower is a communications and observation tower standing some 1800 feet tall.  It was completed in 1976, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure and world's tallest tower at the time.  Those records have been eclipsed, but it’s still pretty impressive.

At the top, you can walk the entire perimeter to view the city 360, but the conditions made for less than ideal picture taking.  The runway belongs to the municipal airport, but they don’t allow any jet traffic, other than emergency stuff like transplant organ delivery.  The main international airport is about 40 km out of town.  There are some glass areas in the floor where you can plant yourself and look straight down.  Loni wouldn’t step on them, neither would Mom.  And I’m the one who suffers acrophobia.

On the side that faced the city proper, the knuckleheads in charge of the place had installed a Coke machine that was brilliantly lit from within.  It cast a reflection on the dark glass that ruined nearly all my photo attempts.  This was the best that I (and Picasa) could do.  That’s our hotel to the lower right, with the neon sign at the top.  Guess from this point, it IS all down hill, at least for the first 1,800 feet.

OH, CAN-A-DAAAA

I forgot to put into my LA-Indy post a photo that will give a chuckle to our fellow Lazy-Dazers:

Once we got to Indy and Mom’s house, a blessed rain came thundering through, giving Albatross a “natural” car wash, and loosening the bug splats enough so that I could wipe them off relatively easily.  This storm also carried some pea hail, so I was glad I had covered the solar panel (blue plastic on roof enclosing foam pad).

We left Mom’s place this morning for the first day of our 12 day bus tour through Ontario and Quebec.  The tour is operated by an outfit called Sunrise, which bought out the local tour company that Mom has been using for many years.  Sunrise is based in Saint Louis, so the bus we’re traveling on originated there, stopping here in Indy to pick up us three and four others.  The three of us were to go to a place in the NW corner of Indy, join two of the other Indy passengers, board a limo, and travel to the SE corner of Indy where the bus would arrive and pick up our group and the remaining two Indy folks.  Then it would head north, past where we met the limo (!), and continue on up to Jackson, Michigan, the first stop.  Why the tour company didn’t just have the bus make a second stop to pick us up in NW instead of having us limo down south is beyond us.  We were told vaguely that the driver couldn’t make two stops.  Huh?  Anyway, we got into the most ridiculous limo imaginable.  I guess it would dazzle the high school prom set, but the seating was awkwardly low (you literally had to crawl and scoot into it) and uncomfortable.  Cool lighting, but that was it.  And no seat belts! 

At our limo pickup point, another big storm moved in, an ominous beginning to our trip. It took us 35 minutes in the limo to reach the bus stop.  It arrived empty, having just dropped off the St. Louis passengers at a lunch spot.  They had boarded at 7:00 a.m., and it was now after 2.  We seven Indy-ites loaded into the bus, and drove over to the lunch spot, which turned out to be three fast-food places in a big parking area.  Since they weren’t leaving until after 3, I went over to the Steak-n-Shake and had a steakburger and vanilla shake.  Sigh.  I can’t help myself.  Loni and Mom had eaten a bit before we left home at noon.

By three, the St. Louis passengers were back on board, making 38 of us in all.  The rain had let up during lunch, but it started again with a vengeance once we got on the freeway.  I was just hoping the driver could see more out the windshield than I was able to from my 8th row seat.  We passed by one rollover accident, and conditions were pretty bad.  We plowed on.  Since it was rather dark and dreary out, our guide put a movie on.  They had six screens spaced along the coach, so viewing was actually pretty good.  The movie was ancient – “The First Wives Club” with Diane Keeton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn.  Harmless enough, and better than staring at the rain-swept windows.

Our dinner stop was in Marshall, Michigan, which has to be one of the cutest towns we’ve driven through.  Looks like everything was built in the very early 20th century, well-preserved Victorians with big porches, a downtown with nifty-looking shops and nary a vacant storefront.  Wish we had stayed there for the night as we would have liked to walk around town.  Dinner was at Schuler’s, which has been operating under the same family since 1909. 

Some of these old legacy restaurants just operate on auto pilot, but this was not bad at all.  Loni and I had prime rib, nicely cooked and flavorful, and Mom had a pot roast that she and others thought was very good.  A good start to the culinary side of the trip.  After dinner we had some 30 miles to go before getting to Jackson.  We crashed there in the Country Inn & Suites.  Nothing remarkable, but perfectly fine.  Breakfast at 6:30, bags out at 7:30, depart at 8:30.  If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium.  Off for zzzzz’s

DAY TWO/May 2:    Oye.  Little sleep last night.  New bed?  Nighttime noises from room companions?  Hmm?  Not much to report about this travel day.  Traveler’s breakfast bar.  Cold cereals, bagels/breads, fruit all gone (replenished just as we finished), pressed-egg pucks.  You get the picture.  Outside it was all gray skies and fog.  I have to say that this is not a particularly scenic area of Michigan, at least from the freeways.  We motored NE towards Port Huron as our port of entry into Canada, as it was hoped to be less trafficked and a quicker crossing.  Our guide cautioned that we should not crack any jokes or make any stupid remarks, as this would result in baggage checks and an interminable crossing.  We all clammed up. The agents came on board and just walked down the aisle as we raised our passports.  That was it.  First stop in Canada was the tourist welcome station where we loaded up on maps and booklets about Toronto.  Welcome to dual language heaven. 

After customs, we were on our way again to our lunch stop, which was a freeway stopping point with multiple fast food places under one roof.  We chose a Canadian outfit – Tim Horton’s, a cross between Subway and Dunkin Donuts.  We were told that this outfit is approaching McDonald’s in number of outlets!  Never heard of them, but we were to find them, like Starbucks, on every corner wherever we went.  The sandwiches had great bread, but the fillings were hit-or-miss.  Mom’s was excellent; mine was pretty skimpy.  I did have an excellent roasted tomato soup.  Our first meal in Eastern Canada!

From lunch, it was a straight shot into Toronto.  Again, bleak countryside, absolutely nothing to look at.  Still overcast and dreary.  To brighten (?) things up, our host put a DVD on of old “I Love Lucy” episodes.  Oh, Lord.  I desperately tried to sleep.  No luck.

Toronto looks just like any other big metropolis.  A zillion highrise office buildings and condos, a lot of them built right up to the edge of the elevated freeway.  We were looking into living rooms as we passed by.  Our hotel here is the Fairmont Royal York, one of those  early 20th century grande doyens that has a great lobby and cramped rooms, all at snooty high prices.  It’s almost in the shadow of the CN Tower, which demanded pictures.

No free internet like last night.  Here, they want to soak me another $17.50 a night for access.  Not this kid, brother.  It’s always the most expensive places that want to nickel and dime you for everything.  Trust me, unless you really like lounging about the public spaces, forget this joint.  We were in the room for an hour, and were still waiting for our bags to appear.  I called the bell desk and they said, “Oh yeah, that’s the room that got mixed up.  We’re working on it, sir.”  Apparently, ours was the only room in our group that was not yet ready when we arrived, so we got switched to another.  Only the master list didn’t get updated.  I think they were waiting for us to call in order to figure out where we were.  To their credit, the bags appeared within minutes after my call.  But the room was so cramped we had no place to open them up.  Not exactly elegance.

Dinner was at an Italian place called Joe Badali’s and it was pretty darn good.  I had a penne pasta with shrimp, very nicely done.  What’s that?  Chocolate fudge cake for dessert?  If you insist.

The highlight of the day was to go see the stage production of “War Horse,” the same story as the current movie.  Too bad no pics were allowed inside.  We were totally blown away by this performance.  It was incredible.  The accolades in the poster below are all justified.

The theatre is actually fairly recent, but wasn’t much to look at on the inside.  According to the tickets that we received, the price for each was $99!  Wow.  I generally would refuse to pay that amount for a ticket to anything, but I have to say that in this case it was worth it.  If you get a chance to see this stage version, jump at it.  The “puppetry” (I hate to use that term as it seems to diminish the brilliance of what we saw) was almost unbelievable.  We quickly succumbed to the artifice and accepted these metal and leather creations as the real thing.  Jim Henson would have been agog.  The “animals” were made in South Africa, according to the playbill.  Somebody there is sheer genius, but equal kudos go to the humans who propelled the beasts and made the movements lifelike.  A stunning show.

I just hope it’s not all downhill from here.