This story starts off sad but it gets better.
Jeff and I love impromptu, spur of the moment living for today kind of trips (kind of the point behind why I started writing this blog). For example the morning after a night of drinking with my girlfriends Jeff offered to drive us to Niagara on the Lake to do a wine tour. Both of my friends declined the offer and suggested we do brunch locally instead. After all they had to work tomorrow. They thought we were nuts. All I thought was how that sounded like a great way to spend a hangover and that I chose the perfect man.
Now to the sad stuff. We had a dog named Indie. She was 6 years old when she was diagnosed with Cancer. We did 8 very very long months of treatments with her. Driving back and forth to Oakville, seeing specialists, trying one treatment after another. We did all of this knowing we were just buying time with her. Cancer has no cure, and not a very long life expectancy in dogs. We did our best and 8 months was what we got with her. When the time came to let her go we sat up with her all night, called the vet in the morning, got her an extra large ice cream, said our goodbyes and let her go. It was the hardest thing we have ever had to do. *As I shed tears writing this over 4 years later* We got back in the car to drive home to get ready for work, it was a Thursday after all. We pulled out of the parking lot and I told Jeff I could not go home. I was not ready to walk back into the house without Indie and he agreed. So he drove straight. We kept driving. By the time we should have been leaving home for work we knew we wouldn't be going. We both called into work and drove to Ottawa. We did not plan this weekend trip. It just happened. It is just where we ended up.
We booked a hotel on the road. We showed up and started walking. We spent the first afternoon mostly wandering the market area. Finding funky lunch spots and later trendy drinking hang outs. We drank our sorrows away that night. While walking back to the hotel we made a pit stop at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier. This is definitely not where we were staying. With our liquid courage we entered and, I can only assume we were super chill and cool, we wandered around the halls and rooms as if we owned the place. I can't even imagine what people watching the security cameras thought of us. Prancing around the halls and banquet rooms as if we were royalty....at least they let us have our fun.
We also hit up the Parliament Buildings, which is a tourist must do when in the capital. When we were there the security guard told us they were closing the buildings for renovations that would last approximately 20 years, because they wanted to maintain the history of the buildings as much as possible. We exclaimed how Canadian it was for them to be so considerate. He then reminded us he would be out of a job and likely would be retired before the work was done. We then reaffirmed how Canadian that was.
The highlight of this trip was the War Museum. It is a must! This is easily a full day in itself. We walked to the museum from Parliament. Getting a cab is not a terrible idea though. We had 4 hours there and it was not enough. We literally closed the place down and tried hiding behind old war planes so we could stay longer. The museum staff is onto people like us and always found us and asked us to keep moving toward the exit. They were very polite about it and of course, apologized for having to ask us to leave.
A stroll down Rideau Canal, take a moment of silence at the National War Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, see where our money is made at the Canadian Mint and walk across the bridge to Quebec. It's all in a days sightseeing.
We thoroughly enjoyed wandering through all of the Embassy's. Trying to guess what
country they were from just by looking at the outside. It was a fun game that we always lost, except The United States, they made sure you knew who they were. We capped our weekend by finding Justin's house. It isn't hard to find, just hard to see. His actual house was under renovation when we were there so he was staying at his friend, The Governor Generals house. I mean Justin was staying there, not the Governor General, he of course had to leave his home for some other lowly residence, how accommodating! This trip is the other time I am 100% sure I was caught on security cameras. Not only did I say I would not hurt Justin if I saw him walking his dogs, but that I would just say hello and keep moving on with my day. *I do not know if Justin has dogs, or if he would walk them if he did, although I think he would, he seems like an outdoorsy kind of guy*. I then proceeded to attempt to squeeze through the gate that surrounds the Governor Generals house (where as I just mentioned Justin and his family were living). This was of course against the advice of Jeff, who thoroughly disagreed with my attempts. My goal was only to see the fancy house that my money helps to pay for. To save anyone else the headache, you absolutely cannot get through or over the fence and I sincerely do not recommend trying. I mean absolutely no harm to our Prime Minister or his lovely family. I was merely a grieving woman acting without my better judgement. Although I probably would have been silly enough to try it anyways.
There is nothing fancy about the food or drink in Ottawa. I think we just had generic foods. Irish pubs seemed common and had super fun trivia.
I told you this story was sad but gets better. I hope reading about this trip brought a smile to your face. My face is likely known to the highest security forces in Canada after this trip, it was worth it.
Read this post to learn about some American history.
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