Day 9 - June 24th

By Mariella

The day begun as a clouded day at 8 o'clock with the wake up call from the lovely hotel in Ottawa. When everybody was dressed casual for the day of culture breakfast started. It was a breakfast as we know already for Canada; muffins, toast, croissants, cereals and coffee that was half as strong as in the Netherlands.
At 9 o'clock all the vans went with their brand new flags to the parliament were the 'wisseling van de wacht' took place. It was a whole scene of red puppets with black-bear-hats and live music. The whole group was taking pictures to make sure they had one of the hunderds pictures for themselves.
After that we got a tour in the parliament from a lovely young guy named Ben. He knew a lot about the senate and the house of commons and the whole building. The building was very nice designed with all kinds of ornaments in the ceiling and on the ground. The library was one of the most exciting rooms in the parliament; it was the only part of the building that remained from the fire in 1984 thanks to a dutyful librarykeeper that closed the big iron doors to prevent the library from getting fire. In that fire (and others) the 2 original paintings were cut out to save them. The cutting made missing parts in the paintings that are still visible.
Aftre the tour we could take a look in the tower. When we arrived at Ottawa we were aware that the buildings are not as high as in Toronto. Now we know why; no building may be built higher than the tower of the parliament. After the look from above we descended to the memorial room, a room with a lot of names from people that died in wars for Canada.
When having enough of the parliament it was time for lunch after which we took a lovely trip over the bridge to the French part of Canada; Quebec. There was the museum of civilisation with an extraordinary architecture, nothing was straight, everything was rounded. In the building the culture of the indians was represented abd there were totempiles as you always see ub the comics of Hiawata. The figure that is on the 20 CDbill was also in the museum, very big and beautiful. It is a replica of the original one at the ambassady in Washington. The museum had an IMAX theatre in which we saw a movie over a chinese old emperor with a whole terracotta army.
After the museum it was free time and most went for a nice dinner and drink to come back at 11 o'clock at the vans which drove us back to the hotel where we could get a new good nighttime rest.