OTTAWA VACATION, FRIDAY

Friday

Friday, our last day of intensive touring, opened maddeningly unintensively: we spent most of the morning watching WarGames on TV in our hotel. I laughed at the pathetic computers, cheered for a cameo by Mr. Strickland, and wished that Matthew Broderick was not something like 45 by now. And then I realized to my horror that it was 11:30, and we hadn't done anything yet all day.
As soon as we got into downtown, we parked under this mall and walked towards Parliament Hill, hoping to catch the 12:30 tour. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the Ottawa InfoCenter across the street from Parliament Hill (aptly named, believe me...you try hiking up it 4 times and you'll realize too) it was 12:29 so that was sort of out of the question. The Ottawa InfoCenter was pretty boring, just an information booth and a little exhibit on Ottawa, and an interactive map. However, there was a perk: a Mountie band playing outside! Benton Fraser, unfortunately, was not there in all his polite awesome-ness, and all the Mounties looked to be over 50 at least. (I have a theory that these poor Mountie dudes were there, wearing different historic Mountie uniforms and playing for photo ops because they were too old to actually fight crime. I'll bet they resent it, too.)

We jogged up Parliament Hill to a tent information center just beyond the West Block (where they were doing renovations) and decided to go on the 6:05 tour so we could do something else for the afternoon. Then my dad got the bright idea of going to the Currency Museum in the Bank of Canada, only a few blocks down the street, apparently. Half way there it started pouring. It was then that I began to realize the folly of wearing a skirt and flats. Believe me, I would come to understand this much, much more before the end of the day.

With much sulking and complaining from my brother and I about having to go to a boring museum, we finally arrived in the huge, glass-enclosed atrium of the Bank of Canada, and posed grumpily next to a huge yap stone. (I was momentarily perked up for already having learned about these in geography.) Then we went inside the museum and were given...free iPods! No, I wish. Actually, they were lent to us for the audio tour, and we had to forfeit two pieces of photo ID to make sure we didn't walk off with them. But I was tempted. My dad didn't really need his health card and driver's license, did he? We started the tour and gradually, I found to my amazement that it was actually interesting. Very interesting. Much more interesting than my dad and brother found it. Of course, they gave up on using the iPods about halfway through the 2nd gallery. My mom would have too, but she was moving with me so she was able to get me to push the buttons for her at every stop. Sheesh. Adults. It's a wonder they've survived as a species for so long.

The actual exhibits dealt with everything from counterfeiting, to the beginning of money as we know it today, to strange currency from around the world and across time, to money during the fur trade, to Canadian money today. Along the way we saw Chinese banknotes that included the punishment for counterfeiting as warning on them, copper shields that were worth the equivelant of thousands of dollars to the people who traded them, and...a wampum bird. The story behind this is interesting. The tribes who used wampum made it themselves, out of clamshells. But they didn't want to tell the people this, because if they did the people might decide to make their own, and that would ruin their monopoly on the wampum market. So they made up a story about a beautiful wampum bird that crashed into the ground near a different tribe. The people killed the bird and took the wampum from its wings, and traded it to the tribe whenever necessary. This would explain any new wampum that arrived, and also the fact that they couldn't just go out and get some nearby. The Europeans, of course, being their scheming entrepeneuring selves, set up wampum-making factories so as to buy out the natives. As a result, the value of wampum plummeted and what may have been the first example of inflation in the New World occured.

By the time my mom and I made it through all 6 galleries, my dad and brother had gotten so bored that they had gone across the street to check out a game and puzzle store, so after (sniff) returning the lovely shiny iPods and getting my dad's ID back we crossed to join them and decided to eat at the dingy little food court. Half the stuff was closed--at 3:00, because apparently the business district closes EARLY. We ended up getting Chinese, only being able to pay with cash, and ending up with...one penny to spare. That's called either divine providence or cutting it really close. By this time the folly of wearing flats was really starting to sink in--the back of my feet were raw and bleeding, and we had to stop at the drugstore in the mall and buy bandaids. So, so it began.

On our way back toward Parliament Hill we made a sidetrip and took pictures of the War Memorial. There were two guards standed there, absolutely motionless, in full dress uniform. And it was surprisingly creepy. Tourists were going up and taking pictures with them, and my parents insisted we do too. First I felt guilty, for taking my picture with someone without asking for permission first. Then it was just sort of weird, having a picture with someone who never moved nor blinked. You'd have thought she was a statue.

A quick walk down some stairs took us to the Rideau Canal, where I took pictures while being freaked out standing on a rickety bridge over dirty rushing water.

Then, with only half an hour before we had to start walking to the tour, my mom and I went to the mall again, this time with money. First we stopped in HMV and we got my souvenir, the soundtrack to Titanic. (Yay! I think I was born 10 years too late because I'm now going through a fangirl phase about it. And yeah, I know, I have a bad habit of buying souvenirs that have nothing to do my trip.) We also went to Smart Set and bought a really cute shirt...and it was then that the aforementioned hamburger feet came into play. We were already late, so we were running back to the escalator when I suddenly felt a horrible stabbing, grinding pain in my left foot. Pulling my left shoe off I realized that, a) my already uncomfortable shoes had been grinding against my foot all day, b) some water from the rain had gotten in there, causing extra rubbing, and c) the glue from the bottom (since the lining had come out) was melting and sticking to my foot. The grinding sensation was what made me describe it as "grinding my feet into hamburger," and it was also led the very very hurried buying of a pair of flip-flops Payless. Big mistake. I bought the hard kind, with fake bamboo in them, not the soft foam kind. The moment I put them on, I started limping from the strain they put on my legs. By the time we met up with the guys at Chapters and started walking (running, really) back to Parliament Hill to make our tour, I was hobbling along, not even able to run. Utterly exhausted we finally arrived at the tent pavillion with 15 whole minutes to spare. We collapsed onto benches and waited. And then, though barely rested, our tour guide arrived, our group assembled, and our tour began.

Going through security was scarier than it should have been. This was because our guide told us to turn on all electronic devices for the guards. So, I turned my camera ahead of time. When we reached the front of the line, I put my camera, camera case, and the random contents of my pockets in the box and started walking forwards through the scanner thing. Behind me I heard, "Miss! Miss! Excuse me, miss!" but I didn't think the guard was talking to me, until my mom said to go back, and turning around, the guard was gesturing to me. He had a heavy French accent, so when he held up the camera and said something, I thought he said "Take a picture," so I was getting ready to take a picture and he was like, "No, no, did you take a picture?" And I was like, huh? And he said "Did you take a picture coming in?" And I said, "Uhhh...no." And then he was like, "Okay," and he waved me through security. After nervously picking up my stuff from the end of the scanner and following the guide, my parents, and the first half of the group into a gallery with benches, I sank down onto one of them and waited, with two thoughts going through my head. One, I totally embarassed myself back there (I never have been very good at understanding accents), and two, why on earth were they afraid of me taking a picture of the entrance? Are they afraid I'm some criminal who's trying to crack their security system? And why don't they ask people with cellphones too? Are they that uninformed, technology-wise?

Our tour started, and our guide had us all introduce where we were from, among the participants from Mexico, India, and Argentina (wow, who new that Canada was so interesting to be such a tourist destination) was a family from Hawaii who was here on vacation. Which posed the question: Isn't it a bit twisted to come to damp, muggy Canada from paradise?

As we travelled through the Senate, the House of Commons, and the Library, gawking at massive oil paintings, fluted columns, inlaid floors, glass domes, and ornate Gothic everythings, I reflected on the fact that it was so sad that a place that was so gorgeous in its architecture and decorating should house something so boring: politics. Sigh...if only it was a castle with a murder or something. Anyway, I took lots more pictures, some of which are at the very bottom of the post, and got yelled at by security again, falling behind from my group while trying to take a picture of a column. Who knew that little miss goody-two-shoes was such a delinquent?

Completely and totally exhausted, and wondering what it would feel like to be dead, we hiked back to the parking garage, endured an entirely absurd search for our car in the airless heck that it was, and stopped at a grocery store to buy deli foot for that night and Sabbath.

Then, sitting in my hotel room, I received the highlight of my day: we finally got the wireless internet to work, and I had a blissful couple of hours before finally falling asleep, so exhausted that I couldn't even think of any more adverbs to describe my exhaustion.