OTTAWA VACATION: THE FIRST 4 DAYS

Hi from Ottawa!
I've decided to liveblog (is that the right word?) my vacation to Ottawa...but unfortunately my internet access didn't work until tonight so it sort of defeats the purpose. Today is Friday, and I'm sitting in my tiny hotel room next to a bottle of pickles on the little desk.
So I'll try to recap what's happened so far.
Tuesday
We drove for 5 hours. Driving conditions were normal. Highpoints included eating donuts and watching Stardust on the DVD player. We arrived at Comfort Inn Downtown (not actually downtown), checked in, hiked up the stairs, marvelled at the room smaller than my bedroom, the lovely inadequate lighting, and the bathroom so small that when I sat down on the toilet I scraped my elbow.
We hiked around the city for two hours on my father's demand before eating supper. It was getting dark, we were disoriented, and I was unjustifiably terrified by buskers. Well, terrified is a bit of a strong word...but uneasy at least. We finally found a food court that was closing down and bought some ricotta and spinach pizza things that were surprisingly good.
Then we were walking through the city and came out in front of Parliament Hill, and wow! Suddenly, Ottawa wasn't that bad. The entire capital buildings were lit up in multi, changing colours, and there was loud electronic music, and then this presentation thing started, with clips and narrators and quotes and poems and stuff, all talking about what it means to be Canadian. It turns out the show is called "Sound & Light on Parliament Hill", and it's every night at 9:30 and 10:30. It was around that point that I decided Ottawa wasn't that bad, and at least for a little while stopped comparing it to Boston and San Francisco and Washington D.C.
Wednesday
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is now officially the coolest museum in Canada, in my eyes. It is also very hard on the feet. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. The entire museum looks as if it's eroded out of a sandstone hill or something, all natural curves and lines and waves. It's also nicely placed on a ridge on the edge of the Ottawa River, so when we ate lunch in the museum cafeteria we had a great view of the Parliament buildings, Chateau Laurier, etc.
Our first stop was the Great Hall, a huge hall full of totem poles (the largest collection of totem poles indoors in all of Canada...or the most important...or something like that). There were facades of West Coast Native dwellings on the side, and you could enter doors to see artifacts and stuff on the inside. Then there was an exhibit about a really ancient tribe (I can't remember exactly which one) that used so many shells that the soil contains layers and layers of them, just piles of broken ones, some of the layers as much as 8 feet thick!
Oh, I've got to go to bed now...to be continued, with the unfortunately rather boring Aboriginal Exhibit, and then the really cool monologue play.