Ottawa memories before I head for bed

** Stories are now inserted** 5pm May 22nd

We're home safe and sound. We need to say a huge thank you to Meg, James and Meg's family for being INCREDIBLY generous hosts and for looking after us all so well. We love you guys and were spoiled by you. Thank you for being so hospitable. Here are a couple shots, stories will be inserted into this post later....

On our first full day in Ottawa (Friday), Hunter and I were feeling slammed by jet lag and were a little out of sorts, as you can see in this pic of his face. Despite our lameness, Paula (Meg's mom) took us out and about. We went to see the locks and the canal at Hog's Back Park. We got to see a boat going through the locks and it was pretty neat. It was a little sketchy having Hunter near the water with no railing to hold him back (or a railing that he would fit through) but we were okay. He didn't fall in and we got to share some cool experiences and lovely weather.

Friday night we were feeling a little better so Meg and James took us out on the town, as well, to see the sights. We headed past all the Parliament buildings and saw downtown, then we crossed the bridge into Gatineau (formerly Hull), Québec for a walk and to get another perspective on Ottawa. In the shots above you can see the lights of Parliament and the surroundings of downtown Ottawa. You can also see that Hunter would rather have been running around. I took the whiney shot right after the family shot where he was plunked back in the stroller for a jaunt.

Saturday we went to Montréal, Québec for the day. Thank you SO much for driving, James. We walked around and enjoyed the sights of Montréal from a few different places. We bought Hunter a hat (finally, the poor blonde kid) to comemorate the trip.

Then, we headed out for some poutine... classic! Fries, cheese curds and gravy. What a handsome couple, eh? The poutine, as you can see... was a little "weird." The gravy was red? It wasn't as good as poutine that I have had in BC, which was too bad, but we didn't really care. It was funny that we must look like tourists because nobody in the restaurant approached us speaking French. That was kind of a disapopintment, I mean, I speak French all day at work. I went out trying to find opportunities to use my French, like... finding the washrooms and buying stuff (well, just the hat, actually).


In Montréal, we went to St. Joseph's Basilique. BEAUTIFUL!! I have waaayyy more pics of this to come, but I had to leave you with this shot of the belly at the top of St. Joseph's stairs (which I DID NOT climb - it'd put a non-pregnant woman into labour) to prove that this baby has been to Québec!



Sunday, we hit up the International Tulip Festival. It was good because we, courtesy of Justin, have Dutch heritage and tulips are all dutchy and such. The day was not as beautiful as the others had been but we still had a terrific time and enjoyed walking around, as well as the many different booths from around the world and all the tulips!