The Civic Centre and all of the Parliament buildings are really quite beautiful and well worth a journey to go to see but 10 minutes out of the centre in any direction you have quite a seedy and down-at-heel inner city. Something like Brussels or Washington DC for example.

My motel was right next door to a Salvation Army thrift shop and there was a pawn shop just across the road. And outside my room this morning was a …. errrr … pavement pizza.

But before anyone becomes too excited by my comments, where else would you find an adequate (because it was) motel or hotel at 68 dollars per night within a short distance of the epicentre of a Capital City?

But I had a good couple of hours around the city even though it was absolutely taters and what with all of this and with yesterday at Exporail I’m a day behind.

But I don’t regret the delay for a moment, as you can imagine looking at these buildings. Sticking around the Parliament buildings, you can see why.

The setting of the Parliament buildings is quite spectacular too, on a bluff looking over the Ottawa River.

You can see why it might have been that this bluff at Bywater, as Ottawa was originally called, overlooking the Ottawa River, was chosen to be the site of the new Canadian capital (much to the chagrin of the Quebecois who refuse to acknowledge its existence and have all their road signs pointing to Gatineau, the town across the river.

But I had a belt through the high Ontario plateau across the top of Toronto on some really stimulating roads that reminded me very much of my wander around the Trans-Labrador Highway and I’m now in another cathouse of a motel at an even-more-reasonable $59.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in Windsor where Strawberry Moose
will be meeting up with his big sister again.

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