Day 3 – Toronto to Ottawa – 1000 Islands

We hopped on the bus again, see ampoule but today we left Toronto to head towards the capital of Canada, Ottawa – which is about a 400km journey.

On the way we watched an Imax movie about beavers.  The LCD screens on the bus didn’t really do it justice, but as soon as the movie finished we saw our first beaver dam and lodge.

For lunch, we stopped at a town called Kingston, which is on the banks of the St Lawrence River.  Kingston is home to a few of Canada’s most important landmarks, like the maximum secuirty prison and the military academy (don’t know if that is coincidental).  It is also home to one end of the Rideau Canal, which winds its way to Ottawa.

The Rideau Canal was built because the St Lawance River was the only way to transport goods by water between Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal.  Because the river is also the border between Canada and the US, during war they were worried that the US could blockade the river. 

They built the canal to ensure safe passage of their ships, however by the time it was built, the war was over and never really needed for its intended purpose.

After lunch we continued on to Ottawa, stopping at the 1000 Islands.  At first we thought this was just going to be an hour boat cruise through a few islands (about 1800 or so to be exact).  But then we came across this one Island which has a castle on it!  Apparently it was built by the guy who owned the Waldorf hotel in New York, and his chef inveted things like 1000 Island Dressing (I bet you guess that already), Room Service, and Eggs Benidict!  As Eggs Benidict is Paul’s all time favourite breakfast… it was exciting to be at the spiritual home of the best breakfast ever!

After seeing the castle, and the shortest bridge between two countries (3 metres between two islands that the US/Canada border runs through), we continued onto Ottawa.  We arrived about 5pm.

Absolutely exhausted from the travel we had done so far, we both collapsed asleep as soon as we got to our hotel room.  After waking up about 8.30, we decided that since it was Kerrina’s Birthday we would go look for a nice place to eat.

The sun was just going down, so we walked to a nice al fresco restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel.  It was still warm, and if it got colder we could just keep buying the $4.75 cocktails!

After dinner we walked up to Parliament Hill, where Canada’s Houses of Parliament sit.  At 10pm a light and sound show started on the wall of the Parliament building which ran through some of Canada’s history which was pretty interesting.

I know this is a bit of a brain dump, and our words are not doing it justice.  As soon as we can find somewhere to upload some photos we will make sure you get to see them.

Hope everyone is well!

Paul and Kerrina