Ottawa: known for being the capital of Canada, the birthplace of Justin Trudeau, the seventh coldest world capital, as well as sixth world capital I’ve ever visited in my life. (SIX SEVEN.) That’s where we were headed for the fourth day of CANEDA; coming up today was a two-hour drive through Quebec into the famous province of Ontario and a single day to see what the Canadian capital had to offer before continuing onwards to Toronto.
But just like in Boston, there were a few more interesting experiences that we had to look forward to before traveling to our next stop. We woke up at around 8 in the morning, wondering where we would be getting our breakfast. The cookies that the hotel provided us had run out, so we were stumped for a bit. It took us a moment to remember that we already had one directly below our feet— there was a mall directly beneath us!
After waking up, me, Casey, my Mom, and my Dad headed down to the Complexe Desjardins and were pretty quickly overwhelmed with the dozens of options that the shopping mall had to offer. Obviously, taking time to survey them would be like trying to visit every shop in the Underground City; it just took too long and wasn’t worth it for a quick breakfast. In the end, we decided to go to the restaurant that was the shortest walk away from the elevator, which was called La Boulangerie Moderne De Montreal. You’re probably noticing that this kind of name sounds extremely French, and you’re right.
This is what it means:
The Modern Bakery of Montreal ended up giving us this fairly recognizable and memorable meal:
The entire thing was basically a cross between a boring piece of white bread and the most intricately decorated pizza anyone had ever seen. It had several different toppings on it, leading to a hundred flavors competing across my mouth every time I took a bite into it. The bread with toppings, despite how simple it seemed, was certainly one of the more memorable foods that we had eaten on the trip up to this place– I’d say it was the second most distinctive meal of the trip, just behind Provisions (that really good Lobster Roll restaurant in Boston).
If you don’t recall, I gave Provisions an extremely high A rating for amazing service, a very distinctive and exquisite environment, and of course, the unique and amazing food. When going through this list I was pretty tempted to put this on A-, but the main thing that’s going to drag this place down to a B is the setting. The mall, especially after being in the Underground City for about half the day (and having been to many shopping places in my life before) wasn’t too distinctive from anything from the malls that I’d seen before; it was pretty large, but the shopping experience was something I’d found far more interesting when we were traveling through Tokyo.
Just for that reason (and I’m sorry to La Boulangerie Moderne De Montreal. Don’t be offended. It’s still an amazing score!)
Rating for Experience #27, La Boulangerie Moderne De Montreal, B
Unfortunately, this marked our final visit to the shopping mall of the Complexe Desjardins. Our time in Montreal was coming to an end, but after packing up in the hotel and getting back inside our little van, my dad suggested that we briefly take a detour to one more major attraction in Montreal before we go to Ottawa. I didn’t know it yet at the time, but this attraction, particularly due to its background stories, was poised to become one of the most interesting places that I had visited on the entire trip.
I got some final pictures of the vibrant city as we drove out to an island known as St. Helen’s Island (or as the French call it, “Île Sainte-Hélène”) in the middle of the St. Lawrence River for the final attraction. Enjoy this last collection of pictures from inside Montreal’s vast city streets.
While driving towards this last attraction, we ended up passing by another legend of architecture. We’d seen this previously afar, but this was our first view of it from up close. Can you guess what it is? (Hint: Go back to Part 5.)
It’s Habitat…
SIX SEVENNNNNNN
It was definitely nice to see Habitat 67, the piece that inspired one of my greatest fantasy locations (worldbuilding projects I do on the side for fun) but somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t the location of our interest. That title went to a place called the Biosphere.
We came all the way here to admire that massive, beautiful structure that was also a museum on the environment. Montreal has both a Biosphere and a Bio dome, both of which were really well-designed museums that centered a lot around our environment. Sadly, we had some arrangements planned out for our trip to Ottawa that kept us from having the time to actually go inside of the Biosphere, but the views from outside weren’t too bad either.
We took a short stroll outside the sphere and noticed that behind all of its steel rods was a large and complex interior structure that acted as an environmental museum.
We actually found out after some further research that both the Montreal Biosphere and Habitat 67, which are in really close proximity to one another, are actually part of a greater project in the city of Montreal called “Expo 67”. The 67, (which may be a surprise to my brain-rotted brother Casey who reads this blog) is not a reference to the Six-Seven meme, but actually associated with the year 1967. In that year, there was a huge World’s Fair built in the city that celebrated Canada’s 100th year of independence. (it was granted independence in 1867) The fair was actually one of the most famous in its time, running for several months and gaining 50 Million visitors from around the globe. Finding this little piece of information was pretty mind blowing. 50 Million people visited Montreal in the 1960s? Even today, for comparison, Canada’s population is closer to 40 Million by most sources.
I also found out, after some research, the origin of what each building was in the project. The Biosphere actually wasn’t built for Canada at all; it was constructed to represent the United States at the World’s Fair in 1967. A few years later, however, in 1976, the Biosphere ended up being almost destroyed in a pretty terrible fire. For some time, it ended up being this hollow steel dome with not much purpose; in 1990, however, the place was turned into this huge environmental museum where it now stands today.
I’m gonna group these two together as part of a greater “Expo 67” experience since they were such a short distance from one another and also had closely tied origin stories. Now, we didn’t actually enter the Biosphere, so when first going to this place I was tempted to only give it a B rating simply because while the structures of both were really cool, there wasn’t much else that was going to give it distinction.
But after doing a bit of research about the Biosphere and Habitat 67 and where they truly came from, that attitude definitely changed. This place was one of the most interesting because there was so much to know about it behind its structure; it wasn’t just what you could see in front of you that made it interesting. What was on the inside here definitely had a huge impact on my score, and it racked up some serious points.
Rating for Experience #28, Expo 67, A
Okay, in terms of experience just standing outside of the dome probably wasn’t that big of a deal; we’d spent the last few days traveling through huge cities with insane structures, and it was going to take more than a big dome to put this in the A. But including the Habitat 67 building, which again, inspired locations from my worldbuilding projects, as well as the backstory behind Expo 67 definitely increased my interest in this place. (Just to clarify, a lot of this rating stuff is subjective. Your list probably wouldn’t be close to mine if you went on the exact same trip)
But with that, our time in Montreal was over; and so was our time in Quebec. From here on out, there would be a lot less French-speakers and signs telling us to “ARRET” (stop in French) as we headed to Ottawa, our third city on this trip. We immediately left the biosphere and drove back onto the mainland Montreal island as my mom grabbed her phone and immediately began searching the driving directions for Ottawa, where we would be spending a single night. The drive past Montreal ended up giving one of the most legendary views of the entire trip. On top of that was one last drive-by next to Habitat SIX SEVENNNNNN. And with that, we were now off to Ottawa.
The first part of the trip consisted primarily of just your average Canadian suburb just outside of the great city of Montreal; there wasn’t anything too significant about it.
But remember how I said Montreal was actually on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River? And remember in part 4 when I said that the view into Montreal’s island was absolutely amazing? Well, the way out of Montreal island was just as majestic as going in. While I did take a picture, you really just have to see it in person to believe it;
Seriously, is this a national park or just regular Canadian countryside?!!! I’ve never seen water this pristinely blue; not in the ocean, not in some really amazing places I’ve visited like Phi Phi Island or Ha Long Bay. The blue waters had some really distinct contrast with the dark green trees that carpeted the ground around the lake; it might not be like the mountains of Sapa, the city of Tokyo, or the vast Pacific Ocean. But it was definitely still a sight worth checking out. The St. Lawrence River might not be the number one place on your bucket list for Canada, but I really recommend checking it out. It will be worth your time, and I hope these pictures convinced you of that.
The rest of the drive to Ottawa, and to Ontario, was relatively quiet. The rest of the scenery mostly just considered your good old Canadian countryside; there was not much of it that was too distinctive from somewhere in the US, but I noticed the further west we went that there were less and less signs that were being written in French. By the time we had reached the border between the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, French signs were appearing noticeably less than before. Still prominent, but not as much as Montreal and certainly nowhere near what Quebec was probably doing.
The majority of the car ride was pretty quiet, but the last twenty minutes, as we neared closer to the city of Ottawa; I could see the buildings were starting to get larger, and I knew we were headed towards a city. The buildings continued to get larger and larger until it turned into a metropolis, but I have to confess:
This was a bit disappointing.
Boston’s downtown had some of the largest buildings that I had ever seen in my life; it was far beyond what I was expecting from a city, particularly one I had characterized with old, colonial architecture. Montreal’s downtown was also very vibrant; it was one of the biggest cities in all of North America that I had ever seen, with the only potential exception being New York. Ottawa, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly known for its amazing skyline. It wouldn’t be until later that night that I would realize how amazing its buildings really were. Here are a few pictures that I took:
For now, I’d say the views for this ride weren’t that bad at all. The majority of it was mostly ordinary countryside, but that crossing of the St. Lawrence River definitely made it a highlight of the trip. That initial drive through Ottawa, particularly after seeing Montreal, was a bit underwhelming.
And for those reasons, I’m giving this place a:
Rating for Experience #29, Montreal – Ottawa, B-
Unfortunately, the drive from Montreal to Ottawa was nowhere near as exceptional and amazing as the one through Vermont and New Hampshire. We didn’t take any interesting stops along the way, and the views, while pretty exceptional along the St. Lawrence River, were on average not as good as they were on our drive through New England a few days previously.
As we drove through the city, our parents started talking about where we were going to get our lunch for the day, as it was already almost 2:00 PM in the afternoon and it had been hours since we had eaten anything. Our parents discovered later on that there was a Chinatown in Ottawa, but for some reason we chose to head to a different Chinese Restaurant that was close to the center of the city.
After some issues with parking our car in a parking garage just outside the restaurant, we walked about half a mile down to the place called Wang’s Noodle House. The place was part of this slightly larger market; stalls lined up on the side of the street selling all sorts of things, from jewelry to clothing. As we walked through the city street, I found nothing too out of the ordinary. The most interesting thing about the walk to the restaurant was that there was a Danish Embassy nearby.
The view of the area, however, got a lot more interesting when we eventually noticed the large Canadian Parliament building that was towering over all the shops on the side of a city street. It was kind of like looking at the amazing view of the mountain range in the distance. And while our encounter (skip this sentence if you want to avoid spoilers) with it later tonight was going to be far more interesting, it definitely set the reminder that Ottawa, despite not being a bustling metropolis, was certainly worthy of the title of capital of Canada.
The lunch we had that afternoon definitely had one of the best-tasting meals that we had on the whole trip up to this point, but like several of the other meals on this trip, there was nothing too amazing about the environment in which we ate. The “market-and-eating on the street” vibe was only mildly distinctive from other places I’d eaten before.
Rating for Experience #30, Wang’s Noodle House, B-
Casey and I were pretty eager to go do some sightseeing, but some of the others in our party (that being our grandparents) were pretty tired after that lunch and wanted to go check out the hotel room immediately.
Overall, the hotel room was pretty nice; it was definitely much better than our Boston hotel and it had a nice view outside with a very good interior. While it wasn’t as distinctive as Montreal, it was still a pretty great hotel room with a decent view.
Rating for Experience #31, AC Hilton, B
The next hour was relatively uneventful; we spent the next hour using the hotel pool and relaxing. Me and Casey were starting to expect, at this point, that our time in Ottawa would be relatively boring. We hadn’t visited any major attractions yet, and since we only planned to stay for one night, me and Casey were starting to expect that Ottawa was just a quick stop on the road before our much longer, and much more eventful time in Toronto (spoiler alert: that’s our next stop on the trip.) We had no idea what was coming. I definitely don’t think that we spent nearly enough time in Ottawa, but what was about to happen definitely made this single night one of the most memorable parts of the trip.
Our family, being Californian, doesn’t really have a lot of connections to people who live on the East Coast of North America. It turned out there was actually a family in Ottawa that our family had known for years; they had kids who had used to live in California before moving away when I was much younger. It had been so long since we’d seen this family friend that I had almost forgotten about their existence. As our parents began to drive us to a restaurant where we would meet our family friends, they recounted stories of things we had done together in the past. I didn’t recall any of them yet; these were people we hadn’t seen in more than half a decade. I spent half of the ride trying to think of where I had seen these people, and the other half looking out at the views of Ottawa, which were actually starting to grow on me.
Well, it turned out that we actually did know them, and they were still somewhat well-connected with the people who lived in our community in California. It took a moment to recognize them immediately after meeting up for the first time in years, but once we did, we hit off on a pretty good conversation pretty quickly. We ended up talking about a lot of things, mostly our travels as well as academics. The family friends, who hadn’t been keeping up with all of the lore in San Diego and the kids in our community, asked me quite a lot of questions about the kids in my grade. They knew more about my life than I thought I did.
We chose to eat at a restaurant our family friends liked called Sapporo Sushi. Although I forgot to take any pictures, the restaurant had some of the best sushi I’d ever had in any of my travels and had a really fancy interior; the seats were large enough to fit two families and there was a variety of different Japanese foods to eat; there was a lot of barbeque, some really good rice, and much, much more.
(no cool visual for this one I forgot to take pictures lol)
Rating for Experience #32, Sapporo Sushi, B
But perhaps the most notable experience of the day was still yet to come; we were headed back to the area near our hotel to a place called the Canadian Parliament. We began driving back into the main part of the city and parked our car a short walk from our destination, completely unaware of what we were about to get ourselves into.
The walk towards the Canadian Parliament in itself already had some pretty outstanding views. While not nearly as impressive as what we had seen in Montreal (sorry to anyone who really likes Ottawa), the main part of the city definitely did prove itself to be one of the more interesting scenes throughout the trip. The area of Ottawa near the Canadian Parliament, while not the bustling metropolis I had initially made it out to be, definitely retained some of the historical French Architecture. A lot of the buildings kept that element of European heritage ingrained into the architecture. I’m gonna be honest; if you showed me a picture of some of these buildings and all the signs in front of them were in French, it wouldn’t be too far away from what I imagine Paris to be like. One of my favorite sights in Ottawa was this Senate of Canada Building standing a very short walk away from the Canadian Parliament Building, which for some reason reminded me a lot of the Supreme Court Building in Washington DC. (Mostly due to this pillars in the front, although it certainly isn’t a complete replica)
Another notable sight was this canal that passed under the city and led into Ottawa River up ahead, which stood just a stone’s throw away (literally) from the Parliament Building! There was a decently sized walkway that led into the small waterway which provided some exceptional views of the city. Remember the existence of that walkway, on the right of the picture. It’s going to be very important later on.
And finally, there was the Parliament Building itself; the symbol of Ottawa! Before coming to Ottawa, I associated the city with one building. This was it.
Just walking from the side of the building to the middle to get that center view felt like it took an eternity. I’m kind of glad we waited until the night to actually visit the place, because the place looked way cooler in the dark than it had looked from afar in the daytime. The entire place consisted of three major buildings; one in the center (facing the Ottawa River) and two on the side surrounding this green park in the middle with a flame in the middle of it. The intricate design of the architecture and style in each of the buildings were impressive. The way they glowed and contrasted with the dim evening sky was impressive. What impressed me most about this place, however, was the scale. Walking from one end of the green in the center to the other felt like I was doing a mile run. All the visitors nearby looked so tiny in comparison to the Parliament Building, almost like they were lego minifigures. The place was so big I couldn’t even fit it into a single picture with my phone camera; I had to take separate photos of each building just to show the entire thing on this blog!
Make that three pictures, actually; the flame that burned through in the center of the Parliament Building was small but certainly shouldn’t be going unmentioned. It’s called the Centennial Flame, and like Expo 67 it was created to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of independence. It’s been up and firing for several decades since, although a quick Google Search has led me to discover that it is not, in fact, an eternal flame. The fire is actually extinguished occasionally for maintenance, but it’s definitely still one of the coolest things I’ve seen in life.
Damn— I’m saying Six Seven in this article way more than I thought I would.
We spent some time just admiring the scenery of Ottawa for a while until eventually heading back to that canal from earlier. You remember how I said it would be “important later on”? Well, it turns out that fireworks were actually scheduled to be taking place on the Ottawa River that night.
Out of all of our time in Ottawa, this was the most memorable moment.
Huge crowds gathered in front of Ottawa as the sky grew darker and darker. I went around taking pictures of the canal to pass the time as we sat there, waiting for the fireworks show to start.
It was a bit of a wait, but it was very much worth it. It had been over a year since I had seen any real fireworks shows. When I saw the sky begin lighting up with colors and heard that first “BOOM”, I pulled out my phone immediately. A moment like this had to be represented. For me, this was probably the most memorable part of the entire trip up to this point.
This could have been the final scene in a movie.
The fireworks continued for several minutes; the entire crowd clapped for minutes afterwards in excitement. I knew pretty quickly what rating I was going to give this place; it was genuinely cinematic.
Rating for Experience #33, Canadian Parliament & Fireworks, A
