Museum of Civilization

There's a few big museums in and around Ottawa, and on Thursdays they're free after 4pm. We went to the Canadian Musuem of Cilivization across the river in Gatineau, Quebec.









Eiffel Tower in toothpicks.

More Ottawa misc.

The market has a big cheese shop, so it was nice to see some crumbly cheeses as opposed to the rubbery pasteurized stuff that's popular in supermarkets here. This shop stank of strong cheese (funnily enough).

Beavertails - big flat fried pastry thing with different sweet or savoury toppings. The market has photo's up of President Obama buying one from here, and also buying cookies in another bakery here.

This row of shops is always funny to walk past - Tattoo Parlour, Bong Shop, Tattoo Parlour, Church of Scientology Evaluation Centre.

This is Don Gato, the old (grumpy) cat at the hostel we are staying at.

Parliament Hill

We walked around the buildings on Parliament Hill. They usually do a tour, but it's closed for the weekend, so we'll have to go back. Some nice looking architecture around there though.




The main building. When you see the inside on TV it looks exactly like English parliament, all wood and green leather seats and people in suits or red gowns.


Outside there were some little houses for stray cats. Super cute, and there were a few of them walking around. A sign says a man feeds them everyday, and squirrels and other animals come and eat the food too (in the pic above there's a squirrel at the far right bowl).

Stroking some kitties. It hasn't really come across in the photo, but the ginger one was massive.

Out and about in Ottawa

There is a canal that freezes over and people can skate on it. This lock is mostly frozen.

Scattered around the city there are some old looking buildings.

The province of Quebec is on the other side of these bridges.


We walked round Byward Market, which is really cool. It's a few streets of independent shops, like The Lanes in Brighton, but with lots of specialised food places in there as well as clothes and music shops and things.

A night in the cells

The hostel in Ottawa is a converted jail, and the rooms are jail cells. This was the corridor and our room.



They have information up everywhere about what it used to be like when it was a jail. Also, it's supposedly haunted and attracts a lot of ghost hunters to stay there. We looked for ghosts but didn't see any.

Coach trip to Ottawa

After a night in Calgary we hit the road again for another killer greyhound journey back east. We were like pro's this time though, we took pillows and plenty of layers.

It was the mostly the same journey we'd done before going the other way, so the stops were the same til the last little bit. The landscape looked very different though, all snow-covered.

We saw frozen lakes and rivers, and some cool sunrises. We were so far from the lights of towns that at night you could see tons more stars in the sky than usual.

7-Eleven paradox

Not sure if you can make it out in the pic, but some stuff we bought in a 7-Eleven came to $7.11. So we took a picture.

More from Fernie

We've seen quite a few trucks with ploughs on the front, in Fernie and down in America too.

This is the only cat we saw in the west of Canada. But probably not the only cat there (but we got told they have to be careful going outside because of cougars and bears and other bigger animals.)

Crossing into 'Merica

Fernie is just above Montana, so Joffy drove us all down into the US for the day. We were fingerprinted and had our retina's scanned at the border, but we got in and bought a few bits and pieces (lots of things are cheaper there).

A small selection of jerky in a petrol station on our way to Whitefish and Kalispell.

TJ?

We ate at Famous Daves. The portion sizes were ridiculous! And very tasty.

Going out for a curry

Me, Lucy, Christoff, Melissa and Joffy.

Digging in the Snow

Joffy's van had been snowed in for a bit.

Some people lent us snow shovels. It was fun shoveling snow and felt like a novelty, but it probably wears off if you have to do it every winter.

We dug from the van to the road where the telegraph pole is.

Tobogganing in Fernie

We went with Joffy and Melissa to a slope near their apartment.

Joffy has a brilliant job, he arranges music and other events for some bars in the town, so we've seen a load of live music since being here, which has been wicked (and also entered a poker tournament - I was out early on, but Chris did really well.)

Arriving in Fernie

We were on the coach early New Years Day. The trip down to Fernie took about 5 and a half hours.
We met with Chris's bro Joffy and he showed us round the town. It's really cool here - a little snowy resort town like Banff, but it's more spread out and feels more like a normal place, less like it's just for tourists.




Ninja Turtle gloves.

Bullets for sale in the supermarket, eek.