As mentioned earlier in the week, I was gone from Tuesday to Thursday on a little jaunt to our Nation’s Capitol.

It was a mix of business and pleasure, and with travel taking up most of Tuesday and Thursday, and business taking up most of Wednesday, there wasn’t a tonne of time for sight seeing. But I did get to walk around downtown Ottawa – which seemed to be mainly comprised of hotels, bars, restaurants, and office buildings and a few statues here and there:

And even an ice sculpture

I believe Winterlude is set to start this weekend and the sculpture is part of it. There were others but they were covered up

Ottawa was pretty similar in style to most of the big cities I’ve visited (ie Toronto, Chicago, etc), with a couple of exceptions.

1. There was a lot more people speaking French (for those who don’t know, Canada has two official languages, so with all the Federal workers, and Quebec literally a hop skip and a jump away, this wasn’t a big surprise)
2. These fancy buildings..

Our Parliament Buildings. (There’s another big building on Parliament Hill – West Block/House of Commons – but for some reason I didn’t take a picture.

As you can see, they were under construction (friends tell me they are ALWAYS under construction) but they are still quite pretty. If I’d been able to get pics of them in the day, you’d see that the roofs are a beautiful green colour (copper roofs that have patina-ed over time)

But I don’t think the Centennial Flame would have looked as cool during the day (my pics don’t really show it’s splendor).

And even though it was a very short trip – I was very happy to return home. I am a homebody at heart. And someone else hates it when I go away too

He says I’m not allowed to leave again – he’s going to be really upset when I go to Mom’s in a couple weeks…

Let cheer him up by voting him America’s Favourite Pet! (Don’t forget to vote daily!)