Saturday, February 20, 2010

Ottawa

Here is our report from our annual trip to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. We left Rochester on Thursday morning and had an uneventful, under 5 hour drive to the Canadian capital city. We quickly dropped our luggage at our hotel, the Chateau Laurier, grabbed our skates and headed for the frozen Rideau Canal. We skated down to Dow's Lake, enjoying the lack of skaters on the ice. We did the whole skating route, about 14 kilometers, taking in the Urban Art show and documenting our progress on the ice.


We returned to the Chateau and our lovely room.
We had a nice dinner at the Cornerstone Bar and Grill and were able to watch the Canadian Olympic Curling team do their thing. After dinner we walked to the park where the ice sculptures are on display and were once again so impressed by the ice creations created by talented artists.


We skated again on Friday morning, ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant before heading over to Hull, Quebec to visit the Snow Playground. This is a nice walk as we walk by the imposing National Art gallery building, and then over an old wooden pedestrian bridge over the Ottawa River. From the bridge there are great views up and down the river as well as a great view back to the Parliament building. Because we were at the Snow Playground on a Friday afternoon, the crowds were small which let us do the snow slides without waiting in line! I love the snow slides! You walk up the back of the slides, sit on your butt, and slide down an icy luge-style shoot! It is great fun! Here are a couple of photos that Jim took of me on one of the slides.

From the slides, we toured the impressive snow sculptures. Here are photos of 2 of my favorite sculptures.

Sally and Bob arrived on Friday night, along with friends of theirs, Dianne and Terry. We went to a seafood place for dinner and had a good meal and good conversation.
Today we all were skating shortly after 9AM, while it was snowing, which made the skating a bit more challenging. However, by the time we went down and around Dows Lake the snow removal equipment was out on the ice, making for a very pleasant skate back towards the hotel.
Jim and I left Ottawa shortly before noon, heading to Scranton, PA, where we are spending the night. Tomorrow we will make the 2 hour drive to New York City, where Corey is running in the Big East Indoor Track Championships. We will drive back home after Corey races. We are looking forward to seeing him run, as we don't get the chance much anymore.

Hope all is well.

2 comments:

PatC. said...

Wave to Hannah on your way through Wilkes Barre! Good luck Cory.

Liz said...

Your fist ice sculpture picture is awesome! Looks like the sculptures hadn't melted much this year.