Over/Under: On the Crew & On the Road: Canada Day Yesterday, Quebec City Day Tomorrow

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting Ottawa for Canada Day celebrations. I had all these crazy ideas of what I would do during the day, but several obstacles popped up.

The day began with a 6:30 am Uber ride to London train station. We boarded train 70 to Toronto and arrived without much incident. After a short forty-minute layover at Union Station, we boarded train 40 to Ottawa. Again not much happened on the train. I do want thank Via Rail and its staff for acknowledging Canada 150 in their own way. On both legs of the trip, special pins and chocolate was handed out to all passengers.

Proudly wearing my new pins!

Train 40 arriving in Ottawa.

I thought I'd check out Parliament Hill, The Museum of History in Gatineau and lot of other free stuff including the fireworks. The first hurdle occurred when it was discovered what was involved in trying to get on the hill. There was a several hour wait in line just for a security check point. Because our train got into Ottawa just before three, this was reluctantly taken off the plans for the day. Next came our trip to the museum. My sister and I planned to stay at our brother & his girlfriend's apartment. After dropping off the bags there, we grabbed a bus to Gatineau. There was a nice little festival with a stage and some vendors setup outside the Museum. We went inside and were greeted with a very long line to get into the exhibits. We just walked around and checked out the non long-line stuff.

Canadian Museum of History's Grand Hall.

The shear amount of people later ruled out our visit deeper inside the museum. We did check out some music on the small stage outside. Just as we were about to head to the bus back to Ottawa, the skies opened up. After about twenty minutes in torrential rain, it began to let up. Soaked through we grabbed a bus back to Ottawa and went to my brother Kris and his girlfriend Jackie's apartment to dry off. Jackie spent the whole day with my sister and I and I'm very grateful for this. My brother had to work almost the whole time we were there.

It was bright and sunny five minutes ago.

Now everyone is wet.

After watching some of the ceremony on TV, we headed out to a prime viewing location for the fireworks. Once the twenty-minute, seventeen-second show wrapped up, we headed back to the apartment to get some well needed R&R. The next day we said goodbye to Kris early in the morning, who had to again work. After thanking and saying goodbye to Jackie, we grabbed an Uber to the train station.

Part of an awesome firework show.

The next leg of our travel began at 10:15 am aboard train 624. After a pretty uneventful six hours (except for more pins and chocolate), we arrived in Quebec City. In retrospect, it would have been better for us to use Sainte-Foy station in the suburbs as it is way closer to the hotel. Going downtown did allow us to scope out some stuff downtown though. After a short wait, we were on a bus to the Sainte-Foy area for our hotel.