Just got back earlier this afternoon from Ottawa. I took Friday off from work and we drove up to Ottawa in the morning. We got into Ottawa around lunchtime and drove to our hotel. This visit to Ottawa we stayed at the Crowne Plaza at 101 Lyon St. The hotel is a few blocks west of Elgin St (the main drag) and near Albert St, which is only 2 streets south of Wellington, so it's not too far to walk to Parliament Hill.
Sparks Street is the first street north of Albert St, so we walked east thru the Sparks St Mall over to Elgin St, and had a late lunch/early supper at Darcy McGee's Irish Pub (one of our favourite places to eat). We stayed in for Friday night, just relaxing.
On Saturday we walked across Sparks St Mall and stopped at North 73 Restaurant for breakfast, then we walked back to the hotel, and I decided to grab the umbrella, as rain was forecasted for Saturday. We then headed south down Lyon St, then cut over to Bank St, then down to McLeod St. We wanted to see the Museum of Nature which was just re-opening after a 6 year renovation. As we walked east on McLeod St, we could see that there was a very large crowd of people waiting to get in. I had thought that the actual grand re-opening ceremonies were taking place on Friday, but they were on Saturday. We decided to find a place on Elgin St to have a cold drink and wait for awhile. After 30 to 40 minutes we strolled back and they were slowly letting people in - free admission, so the place was packed with lots of young families. We finally got in the doors and went up to the top level and worked our way back down. This museum is a good idea for a place to take Damien and Porter. So we will have to see if we can schedule it in this summer as a day trip.
We walked back up Elgin St, had a bite at McDonalds, then walked over to Byward Market. We bought the 3 grandsons some cute T-shirts at the Crazy Moose. We then headed back to the hotel. It started to rain just a few minutes before reaching our hotel. We found a spot to get out of the rain, and waited for about 15 minutes before it let up. We went back to our room to rest our legs and then in the evening we walked one block west to Bay St, and had dinner at the Bay St Bistro. I had a nice steak dinner, and Aileen had a very nice Chicken dish.
Sunday morning we walked back over to the 73 North restaurant for breakfast - it was very busy and I think we were there for 1.5 hours. We decided to walk over to Major Hill Park on Sussex Drive to see what was going on. The tulips were mostly gone, but we got our Tulip Festival Passports (prepaid as part of our vacation package) and walked around the Festival tent and grounds. We walked over to Notre Dame Cathedral, but the next mass was not until 12 noon, so we decided to walk back down to the Byward Market. We thought about going on the Rideau Canal cruise, but we were in between cruise times, so we just decided to head back to the hotel for a while. We went out again late afternnoon and walked down to the Fox& Feather Restaurant on Elgin St. We had a late lunch/early supper, then headed back to the hotel and lazed around.
This morning we checked out around 8 am and stopped at Carleton Place for breakfast. We took Hwy 15 down to Kingston, and stopped in Kingston at the Toys R Us to pick up a small Lego toy for each of the boys. Then we jumped back onto the 401 and back to Trenton.
So it doesn't sound like we did too much, but we had a good time - no schedule - just mosied around and spent quality time with each other.
Looking forward to bringing Damien and Porter up to see the Museum of Nature. Will have to see what happens.
