Visiting my own City

You've heard all the tourist ads...be a tourist in your own town...well this summer we've got to. If you are wondering why. check out what it costs to fly to Aus.

Yesterday we went to see the changing of the guard on Parliament Hill. This is done by the Governor General's Foot Guard. You can see their official website here.

The procession is headed up with the band followed by the rest of the guard. The Sock wanted to see what was going on.

While you can't really see it, behind all those furry hats, the parade square is lined with people. The show lasts for 30 minutes and my DD who has learnt drill in cadets decided to inform everyone around us what maneuvers they were doing whether we wanted to know or not. The changing of the guard is quite popular in Ottawa (I think that fact that it's free has something to do with it) so everyone was out that morning.

If you look very close....no closer I don't have a zoom feature on my camera....there is a brown spot in the grass. That is a gopher who appeared from no where and freaked out. It ran along the edge of the parade square in front of the spectators finally scaring one poor lady by running pass her. Parliament Hill is very close to the Byward Market so I think that the poor animal just wanted to go to some trendy cafe for brunch before picking up the concert tickets he won on the local radio station.

Not wanting to deal with the line-ups for tours of the Parliament buildings, we headed down the East side of the Hill to go to our next stop. Along the way we found The Famous Five. They are statue number 3. "These women won the "Persons" Case, a 1929 court ruling which legally declared women as persons under the British North America Act and made them eligible for appointment to the Canadian Senate." And as we're now legally declared persons, if we want to knit....we can....

On it was to the Royal Canadian Mint. BAH!!!! they had to take a vacation when DH does so the tour would consists of looking at machines just sitting there....doing NOTHING. What's the fun in that? Woolworth was hoping to get his picture taken with the solid gold brick in the gift shop. (they let you touch and try to lift it). But taking photos is not allowed and the big burly guard was not one to be crossed. So Woolworth had to be content with getting his face on an RCMP quarter.

Back to the car, then we're homeward bound. On the way we passed by the entrance to the National Gallery of Canada. There is oldest DD off to the side because she's too cool, DS trying to climb the spider's leg (another burly guard told him to get down) and this is what DH and second DD were looking at in the middle. A spider complete with egg sack. Okay that's enough of Ottawa for today....

Until next time,

Yours in Yarn,

The Fibreholic