Waking up the fairly reasonable time of 6:30, the only alarm things was my phone telling me it was 2 degrees outside.

Everything outside was fine though – not even a frost. By the time we were lugging our bags to Gare Centrale, it was around 5 degrees – but considering the heavy bugs and the up-hill-ness of the journey, I was kinda grateful for the cold. It was fine. We arrived at the VIA Rail lounge to sit for a moment, enjoying their wide selection of snacks – you could have an apple, or if you didn’t want an apple, you could have … an apple. 🙂 They had a coffee machine and a choice of juices and soft drinks so that was great. It’s also of course in the middle of a great big train station with a whole bunch of food outlets so nobody’s about to starve waiting for a train.

The train was delayed by about 45 minutes, but we weren’t on any tight schedule so it wasn’t a problem. One interesting thing was that they came around the lounge with some mobile scales – fortunately not to check passengers (how much extra baggage would I cost!) but just the bags. I just scraped in but Perry’s bag was a bit over, so he had to shuffle a few things into his hand luggage. Nobody else has the handle the luggage but us, so it does seem a little funny to be worried about it (but I guess it’s a good way to charge extra fees if that’s your thing).

We boarded with our perfectly weight-distributed luggage, there was a ton of luggage space on the train which was great, then we took our seats. Yesterday Perry checked the seating map and noticed two table-seats facing each other had become available, so we shifted the booking to use those seats. Then when we boarded perhaps we learned why the seats were available. It was a bit like my flight from Hawaii to Boston – one of the seats had no window. I guess it was a trade-off – Perry gets to sit in the direction of travel but no window. I travel backwards but I have a view. Seems kinda fair?

The staff were great – not too long after being underway tea/coffee/juice was served, and a bit after that, a tasty meal of a three-cheese omelette with bacon and potatoes, some fruit and a cinnamon bun. Really tasty!

On thing about the journey that was vaguely interesting – as soon as (I guess) we left the province of Quebec, all the train announcements switched from being French first, to English first (still followed by French of course). I think the train got up to maybe 150km/h, so not exactly whizzing by but it wasn’t a real long journey so all good. I took a few photos out the window but most of them focused on the windo rather than the scenery, so this is about it for a slice of Canadian countryside:

After a bit of a train-nap, next thing I know we were arriving at our destination, Ottawa station. Kinda weird that the platform is at ground level, so getting the suitcases down the stairs from the train was a bit of fun.

The station building itself wasn’t too exciting but of course I took a photo anyway.

After a small wait, we got an Uber to the hotel. We were there kinda early so the room wasn’t ready, and luckily the owners (at a guess) saw us standing at the front all confused and let us in. It’s not exactly a hotel I guess, like not a proper reception area or anything like that, a more modern approach where they just email you codes to the front door and the room. One thing I didn’t realised when I booked it – the stairs. Happily we are only one floor up. Even more happily, one of the staff/owners carried my suitcase. Sweet!

Since the room wasn’t ready, glad we could leave the luggage there, so we could go and perform our important civic duty – vote! We booked all of this holiday before the election had been announced, and, very luckily, on one of the few days we could vote overseas, we ended up being about 15 minutes away from the Australian High Commission. There’s only 3 of them in Canada so we definitely had good luck with all that. The process was pretty much the same – cardboard fold-up voting booth and everything, and it was nice to speak to a few Aussies for a few minutes.

One thing we quickly learned about our hotel, it seems to be in an ‘interesting’ part of town judging by the number of people who don’t seem to have a home to go to. It felt a bit like years ago at Seattle, when there were plenty of homeless people near the hotel and then almost none. Well I guess Ottawa has a few more than ‘almost none’ – there seem to be quite a few people around the place who are currently experiencing homelessness.

I didn’t take photos of them of course, but I did find some pretty old buildings and things.

After voting, in lieu of a democracy sausage we stopped off at a cafe and has a delicious cheesy croissant and ice coffee. It mightn’t look the best but it sure was nice.

We ventured into the Rideau Centre, basically a big shopping mall with a Metro station build in. Big place!

Hidden in one corner was ‘Farm Boy’ a supermarket, kinda, but with lots of really fresh ingredients, and even freshly made food, both hot and cold. I didn’t get many photos coz it kinda feels weird to be taking photos in a shop. – but this was one of just several big selections of food.

We stocked up on important things like chips and yoghurt, and headed back to the room hitch was now very much ready, and very clean. Nice!

We then discovered there is an entire TV channel dedicated to “The Price Is Right’ , and promptly lost an hour or two. I must say the American version has tons more games than the Ian Turpin version ever had. And since these repeats are from 1982/3 it’s fun watching all the cringe, while remembering we lived through that time as well.

For dinner we didn’t venture too far, still trying to get the vibe on how feral the neighbourhood is, so just stopped off at a pizza joint that was more faded than glory – but the pizza itself was delicious. Yes it has pineapple on it and I am apologising to nobody! 🙂

The rain was starting to fall, so that was about it for the day. We’ve bought tickets to the hop on hop off bus for tomorrow (of course!) so we’ll hopefully get a better idea then of what Ottawa has to offer. See ya tomorrow!