Ottawa is capital (pardon the pun!)

We drove from Quebec City to Ottawa and got there a little later than we' hoped beaause of all the road works - at one place we waited about 20 mins just so that cars that failed to get in line could merge!! We arrived about 2:00 p.m. and liked the location of our hotel (the Quality Hotel) on Rideau Street - great place to walk to Byward market - it had a supermarket across the road as well and we were able to drive to the Museum of Civilization easily as well from there.
The first shot is of the Bakery that Obama bought his Canadian cookies - see the sign at the left! There are huge pictures of him in the Bakery - the name is Le Moulin de Provence and it sells lovely freshly baked bread and cookies and desserts so we had coffee there - most important for my Dutch Treats!! The next picture is of the Parliament buildings from the park.

The statue is of Colnel By who the market is named after.
The next picture is of the Rideau
canal and the following picture is the view of the canal from above.






























We were delighted to see that there was a set of posters showing the strong ties between Canada and the Netherlands - here are Wouter and Zu standing by one of them.















Of course no visit is complete without a picture with a moose - here in the Rideau Centre.














The other spot that my dutch friends had to visit was The Museum of Civilization - a wonderful way to understand Canada's heritage. The following are shots at this museum.



The shot on the left is in the main entrance hall - very tall and majestic rather like a modern cathedral.










The sculpture on the left is of the Haida people of the West Coast of British Columbia - their hats look like a modified coolie hat. In fact it is thought that many thousands of years ago the Haida Native people came across the top of Asia to the Alaska and on to Canada.


The totem pole on the right is an early one carved by the Haida people of British Columbia. The Museum had an exhibit on the horse and included some of Farfand's amazing work - metal horses (he is from Sasketchewan).