After we left Ottawa we headed to Montreal for three days. Montreal is only about two hours drive from Ottawa. Much closer than we had realized. Both of us have been to Montreal before, so we knew that we wanted to stay in the old part of town where you can walk down the cobblestone streets and feel like you take a step back in time. We decided to 'splurge' a little and stayed at a very nice hotel right by Place d'Armes. In fact, the hotel was even called 'Place d'Armes'.

The second day was grey and rainy so we decided to go to a museum or do some kind of indoor activity. We went to the 'Biodome' which is an exhibition about eco systems of the world. It was pretty interesting and well done with sections on the tropics (complete with monkeys, exotic birds, anacondas and crocodiles), the arctic (penguins and other funny looking birds), the Ontario nature (otters, ducks and other Canadian animals) and Madagascar (LEMURS!!!).

That evening we went for dinner in the Latin Quarters and unfortunately picked a not so great restaurant among hundreds of excellent ones! Oh well, at least the atmosphere was nice and festive. It was October 31 which means Halloween in North America. Various creative and funny costumes were on display on the sidewalk as people were on their way to different Halloween parties.

Unfortunately, our visit to Montreal became very somber when Robert found out that a friend of his had died in an accident in Africa. Even though the following day was beautiful, and we went for a nice walk, we decided to head back to Ottawa the following day as Robert had decided to travel to Tanzania for the funeral and his flight was leaving from Toronto which is closer to Ottawa than to Montreal. We decided that Victoria would stay with her friend Tony who had offered us to come and stay with him next time we visited Ottawa. He probably didn't think we would be back so soon....

Robert flew to Tanzania that Wednesday and Victoria settled back in Ottawa. Robert will write a bit about his trip in a separate entry to the blog. Victoria spent her time reading, exploring more of Ottawa; swimming, running and going for a hike in Gatineau Park.

After Robert's five day trip (3 days of travel, two days of actually being in Tanzania), he returned last night completely dazed and confused, jetlagged and exhausted and we are using today to rest before we will continue our travels tomorrow. The plan is to go to Kingston which is located slightly south of Ottawa and then continue back into Quebec and towards the Maritimes.

written by  Victoria & Robert on November 10, 2009 from Ottawa, Canada
from the travel blog: Across Canada
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it's a nice posting , good work

written by  rachti on November 10, 2009

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