Canada Day Holiday - Day 3

Today I was determined to instill some culture & education on my children.  So The Big Oh was up early to line up for some free guided tour tickets of the Parliament buildings. We were warned the first day we arrived that if we wanted our preferred time we would have to be in line well before the ticket office opened - best advice of the weekend.  The Big Oh was in line at 7:25am (the office opens at 9:00) and he was already 11th in line.  By 8:00am the line was already snaked around the corner and by the time me the girls met up at 8:30am I'd say the lineup was easily a couple of hundred of people!   We were able to get tickets to Centre Block & East Block and enjoyed two 40 minute long guided tours that gave us some history of the Canadian parliament and the buildings - educational portion of the trip - check.  Now I was happy.

Unfortunately the second half of the day didn't run as smoothly.  It was a case of trying to do too much - my fault entirely.  I planned to do the tourist-y double decker bus tour of the city where you can get on and off at various attractions and explore at your own leisure.  There were two attractions I wanted to go to - The Royal Canadian Mint and The Museum Of Nature.  So we hopped on the bus but got off on the first stop to get some lunch.  After an hour & half lunch it was already 3:00pm & by the time we got to the Mint they were already sold out of tour tickets for the remainder of the day.  Because we didn't know this before we got off the bus, we had to wait almost an hour before the next bus came back to pick us up!  By this time the kids were getting tired & we wouldn't have enough time to enjoy the museum.  So no museum either.   When we were picked up by the bus we rode the remainder of the tour route & then headed back to the hotel.  I was disappointed but I think the kids were glad to just rest before dinner.

For dinner we just walked down the main street (which our hotel happened to be on) and just picked one whose menu looked appealing.   One thing I noticed was that almost every restaurant had some variation of poutine on it!  After 3 days I asked the kids to eat something healthy and no side orders of fries or onion rings!

We will be heading home tomorrow but not before trying one more restaurant & going back to The Mint for a quick tour!
Y.C.