company

This past week we were graced with visiting relatives who stayed in town for almost precisely 24 hours. My sister and brother-in-law took a Dutch uncle and aunt to Ottawa for a day, since what tour of Canada is complete without seeing Ottawa? Or Banff or Jasper? Or Niagara Falls? Or... um... Smithers? Okay, so it's tough to decide what constitutes a sufficiently complete tour, but they saw most or all of the above so that's a great start. Enough explaining for now; as was my essay-writing philosophy back in the student days: fewer words, more pictures. Well, I rarely wrote any essays, but that's another story entirely.

The first evening we did a nice walk through the local neighbourhood, past the Prime Minister's house (and no, [unnamed sister], that's not on Downing Street), past Carrie's work, past a bazillion embassies, and back home via a slightly crumbier part of town.

The guys:


The gals:


Oom en Tante in front of 24 Sussex (PM's house). Sorry Martine, there's not much to see from the road.


Slightly dirty water; this is where the Rideau River spills into the Ottawa River.


Awesome! Guns! Oh, and some sort of war memorial. But guns!


This the Pearson Building, where Carrie works.


The next day Carrie had to work so it fell to me to entertain... what a nightmare! Despite my lousy efforts, we stayed busy and saw plenty of things.

The Rideau Canal locks, where the canal meets the Ottawa River.


We even got to see the locks in action.


At the war memorial on Wellington, there was some sort of changing (or standing around) of the guard, so we spent a few minutes watching other tourists poke some fun at the gun-wielding guards... always a smart idea.


Finally we enjoyed a great buffet at Tucker's Marketplace Restaurant. I didn't know a place existed where you could get pizza, sausage, chow mein and ice cream all at the same buffet. Pizza! Crazy. But delicious. Oh and nice pose, Oom Geert.


Little story. Last year Carrie and I were in the Netherlands visiting up a storm. We were on the train from Zwolle to Assen (I think). At some random city in between, the train stopped at the station in between to pick up passengers. Well, who happens to walk into our particular train car at that particular time but Oom Geert on his way home from work! We'd met him a week earlier, so luckily we recognized him. Even in Holland we keep running into people we know!