HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Contiki Husband REUNION
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing
WORD OF THE DAY: CONTIKI
I seem to last on little or no sleep these days. Gone are my Tucan days when Kate and I were tucked up in our tents by 9.30pm. After getting to bed at 3am this morning I was up at 9.30am. Marc didn’t have to go into work till 12 noon and then he was going to come back and collect me at 2pm for us to head to the airport to collect Andy at 2.55pm.
So with a wave to Marc at 11.30am as he set off to work, I had a few hours to kill. Marc only moved into his apartment 3 weeks ago and doesn’t have cable hooked up yet. Lucky for me, he has a squillion DVD’s and most seasons of all the major TV shows. So I pulled out some seasons of Nip Tuck and watched that till Marc got home just after2pm. I haven’t seen Nip Tuck in years and I must admit I really like the show. It is so risqué, graphic and controversial and I love it. It helps that Julian McMahon is a bit of a looker as well.
Marc was back at 2.15pm to collect me and he hooked it to the airport to collect Andy. We didn’t want to park and pay, so we cut a few laps until a drop car park became available where you aren’t allowed to leave the car. So with a text message that Andy was at the baggage carousel I ran in as the welcoming party and only waited 5 minutes till I got a tap on the shoulder and there was Andy. I was waiting at the international arrivals where he had come in as a domestic passenger as he had arrived into Canada via Toronto. Welcome to Ottawa and now our little reunion was complete. It has been nearly 12 months since we all first met on our Contiki Spain tour and we were inseparable. They looked after me in my darkest Sangria hour and we had plenty of stories and tales to recount over the next few days.
We stopped for a late lunch at Wendy’s and then Marc had to get back to work to finish the late shift for the day. Our visit probably wasn’t the best timing for him as he goes on holidays on Friday to Peru where he is doing a 14 day Contiki tour. It will be interesting to see what he thinks of their South America product. So between getting his stuff organized for the trip, finalizing work files and now 2 visitors staying for 3 nights, I have to say he is taking it all really well. He can be a bit is a stress muffin at times, so maybe having us here maybe a blessing in disguise. Either way, I do thank him for letting us stay at his pad and I can’t tell you how good it is to spend time with friends and just how much I have missed socializing. I have a smile from ear to ear.
So Andy and I wiled away the afternoon catching up, watching TV and internetting till Marc got home at 9.30pm. It is still daylight here till around 8-8.30pm and we couldn’t believe at one point we looked at the clock and it was 7.30pm, where the hell did the time go. In bed at 3am this morning, looking at my watch at 7.30pm and it is still bright as day (literally). Time seems to travel so quickly here. Maybe because I am now accountable for my own time. No more schedules to meet, group dinners, departure times and people organizing things for me. Well in saying that all my next destinations people have things organized for us to do and it is quite nice to have other people looking after me and showing me around their home cities. Pizza was on the menu tonight and then we were up gas-bagging again till 2.30am. I’m telling you we aren’t even aware of the time until we looked at our watches and figured we better get some shut eye as we planned to head into Ottawa and get some sightseeing done tomorrow. Marc had bought in a few tourist information brochures and after having a read through them the main thing I wanted to do was to get to the Royal Canadian Mint where you can hold a gold bar worth 500,000 USD!!! Now that sounds cool right!
So welcome to Ottawa.
Ottawa is the capital of Canada. It is the second largest city in Ontario and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, located on the north bank of the Ottawa River; together they form the National Capital Region (NCR). Founded in 1826 as Bytown and incorporated as "Ottawa" in 1855, the city has evolved into a political and technological center of Canada. Its original boundaries were expanded through numerous minor annexations and ultimately replaced by a new city incorporation and major amalgamation in 2001 which significantly increased its land area. The name "Ottawa" is derived from the Algonquin word adawe, meaning "to trade". Initially an Irish and French Christian settlement, Ottawa has become a multicultural city with a diverse population.
Mercer ranks Ottawa with the second highest quality of living of any large city in the Americas, and 14th highest in the world. It is also rated the second cleanest city in Canada, and third cleanest city in the world. In 2012, the city was ranked for the third consecutive year as the best community in Canada to live in by MoneySense.
Étienne Brûlé, the first European to travel up the Ottawa River, passed by Ottawa in 1610 on his way to the Great Lakes. Samuel de Champlain three years later on his trip wrote about the waterfalls of the area, and about his encounters with the Algonquins, a people who have been using the Ottawa River for centuries. These early explorers were later followed by many missionaries. Philemon Wright, a New Englander, created the first settlement in the area on March 7, 1800, on the north side of the river, across from Ottawa in Hull. He, with five other families and twenty-five laborers’, set about to create an agricultural community called Wrightsville and Wright pioneered the Ottawa Valley timber trade(soon to be the most significant economic activity) by transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Quebec City.
Bytown (Ottawa's early name) came about because of the Rideau Canal, on which preliminary work began in 1826, the year of Bytown's founding. Its construction was overseen by Colonel John By, and was intended to provide a secure route between Montreal and Kingston on Lake Ontario, bypassing the stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering New York State. Colonel By set up a military barracks on the site of today's Parliament Hill. He also laid out the streets of town with its "Upper Town" and "Lower Town" separated by the canal. Bytown's population grew to 1,000 as the Rideau Canal was being completed in 1832. Bytown was renamed Ottawa in 1855, when it was incorporated as a city.
On December 31, 1857, Queen Victoria was asked to choose a common capital for the Province of Canada and chose Ottawa. The Queen's advisers suggested she pick Ottawa for several reasons: Ottawa's position in the back country made it more defensible, while still allowing easy transportation over the Ottawa River. Ottawa was at a point nearly exactly midway between Toronto and Quebec City (500 kilometers), and that the smaller size of the town made it less likely that politically motivated mobs could go on a rampage and destroy government buildings, as had happened in the previous Canadian capitals.
Starting in the 1850s large sawmills began to be erected by entrepreneurs, known as lumber barons, and would become some of the largest in the world. Rail lines erected in 1854connected Ottawa to areas south, and to the transcontinental rail network via Hull and Lachute, Quebec in 1886. Between 1910 and 1912, the Chateau Laurier, and a downtown Union Station would be constructed. Public transportation began in 1870 with a horse car system, overtaken in the 1890s by a vast electric streetcar system that would last until 1959. The Hull-Ottawa fire of 1900 destroyed two thirds of Hull, including 40 per cent of its residential buildings and most of its largest employers along the waterfront. The fire also spread across the Ottawa River and destroyed about one fifth of Ottawa. The Centre Block of the Parliament buildings was destroyed by fire on February 3, 1916. The House of Commons and Senate were temporarily relocated to the recently constructed Victoria Memorial Museum, now the Canadian Museum of Nature until the completion of the new Centre Block in 1922, the center piece of which is a dominant Gothic revival styled structure known as the Peace Tower.
Ottawa sits at the confluence of three major rivers: the Ottawa River, the Gatineau River and the Rideau River. The Ottawa and Gatineau rivers were historically important in the logging and lumber industries and the Rideau as part of the Rideau Canal system for military, commercial and, subsequently, recreational purposes. The Rideau Canal, connecting the Ottawa River and the Saint Lawrence River at Kingston, Ontario, by-passes unnavigable sections of the Rideau River as it winds its way through the city. Rideau is a French word that means 'Curtain' in English, and the Rideau Falls resemble a curtain, thusly named by the early French canoeists. During part of the winter season the frozen waters of the canal form the world's largest skating rink thereby providing both a recreational venue and a 7.8 kilometers transportation path to downtown for ice skaters.
Bilingualism became official policy for the conduct of municipal business in 2002 and 37% of the population can speak both languages, making it the largest city in Canada with both English and French as co-official languages. Mother tongue was listed as 62.8% English, 14.9% French and 21.6% list languages other than English and French as their mother tongue.
The Federal government is the city's largest employer, employing over 110,000 individuals from the National Capital region. Ottawa is also an important technology center; its 1800 companies employ approximately 80,000 people. The concentration of companies in this industry earned the city the nickname of "Silicon Valley North." Most of these companies specialize in telecommunications, software development and environmental technology. The City of Ottawa is the second largest employer with over 15,000 employees. In 2006, Ottawa experienced an increase of 40,000 jobs over 2001 with a five-year average growth that was relative slower than in the late 1990s.
Ottawa's hosts a variety of annual seasonal activities — such as Winterlude, the largest festival in Canada, and Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill and surrounding downtown area, as well as Bluesfest, Canadian Tulip Festival, Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, Ottawa International Jazz Festival, Fringe Festival and Folk Music Festival, that have grown to become some of the largest festivals of their kind in the world. In 2010, Ottawa's Festival industry received the IFEA "World Festival and Event City Award" for the category of North American cities with a population between 500,000 and 1,000,000. As Canada's capital, Ottawa has played host to a number of significant cultural events in Canadian history, including the first visit of the reigning Canadian sovereign—King George VI, with his consort, Queen Elizabeth—to his parliament, on 19 May 1939. VE Day was marked with a large celebration on 8 May 1945, the first raising of the country's new national flag took place on 15 February 1965, and the centennial of Confederation was celebrated on 1 July 1967. Elizabeth II was in Ottawa on 17 April 1982, to issue a royal proclamation of the enactment of the Constitution Act. In 1983, Prince Charles and Diana Princess of Wales came to Ottawa for a state dinner hosted by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In 2011, Ottawa was selected as the first city to receive Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge during their Royal tour of Canada.
So this is Ottawa and I get to spend 13 glorious nights here with FRIENDS. Amy and I head to Montreal for 4 of those nights, but I LOVE Canada, this is my 4th trip to this massive and beautiful country and it will be great to explore the French/East side culture of this diverse country.
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