Our with
N. trip to Canada.
Easter school vacation, 2006 год. Beginning of the trip is in
here --->. (In the beginning there was Lake Champlain and the chocolate factory )Our hotel room had a small kitchen and the kitchen had plates and dishes in it. The TV was bragging in French and was showing shameful, loathsome things. That night I had a very good sleep. The morning came refreshing and after making N. breakfast and glancing on the map, cheerful we went down to the garage and fast we go though the plains on our way to the glorious capital of the country Ottawa.
Ottawa
Ottawa is home for 700 thousand Canadians. The language here is still the same French, yet because of the proximity of some English-as-major province beginning on the other side of the river, the French in here used with less enthusiasm than back in Montreal. Our goal was the Parliament. I parked just in 60 yards from the Parliament, yet not without of a little bit of “adventure”.
Here comes our parking “adventure”: while circling around what appeared to be Ottawa’s downtown I spotted a parking sign pointing to the basement of a skyscraper. I pulled down off the street, the gates of the garage went open, and without any second thought we slid inside. As we are inside the gate went close behind our car, separating us from the sunny outside. We went through one completely desolated floor, then though another one, then one more floor – still not a single parked car! Gosh, it’s getting creepy! Not a single sole in supposedly crowded place! Well, we got out of the car, I’ve grabbed my child’s hand and off we go to the elevators. Not so fast! The elevators do not work! Not a single one of them! Getting even more creepier every moment! We went to the stairs. We went up five stairs trying every door on our way. Every single door was locked! Got to go back down. The thought on the back of my mind was: What if we are trapped in here? Cell phone does not work, - not enough signal. What a fabulous place this makes for maniacs! I grabbed the child's hand and we walked up through the empty parking floors to the entrance. The tall booth is empty! There is no one in there! Are we really in trouble?
We went to the gate and I found a button next to it. I pressed the button – the glorious gate went open! (Big sigh of relieves). Aha! Yet, still, “Huston, we’ve got a problem” – there is no such a cute button outside of the gate. What are we to do – leave the car behind and go out? What if we will not be able to open the gate on our way back?
To this time, unfortunately, as it often happens, I was aggravated by some another unrelated “circumstances” which screamed for immediate actions. These “circumstances” greatly influenced my "decisiveness". We decided, “so be it“ and out we go. The gate went down behind our backs. - We better check right-away whether we could get our car free and out! No! We could not! That was exactly what I feared for. After several attempts - there is no way we could open the gate. Our poor car is trapped inside. What we gonna do without it at the far away end of the World?
Yet, eventually we have found the solution to this little puzzle. It turned out to be that if jump up high enough and wave my hand at the high point, then “HURRAY”, -- something clicks inside and up goes the gate! I can get the gate opened! There you go! Gosh!
Proud and up-beat after taking care of whimsical parking gate we went look over Ottawa. Finally here it is en front of our eyes - handsome cutie Canadian Parliament, his central wing.
And the left wing goes with it as well.
And the right wing is not far away too.
There is a fountain in front of the Parliament. The bubbles of gas ascend from the water, producing fumes. We hear Russian speech. I turn around to see a mom with two kids of about the same age as N. I smile my friendliest smile and talk to her in Russian and soon later we become acquainted. They are locals, from Ottawa, former dwellers of the city of Leningrad.
Her name is Marina (Mary). They live just about 300 yards from here in the building, they waving “over there”, came to ascend to the Parliament’s tower for a lookout and they volunteer to be our tour guides.
Together we take an elevator to the tower, Mary swiftly abrupts an attempt of some Indian-looking guys to cut in front of us in the line. We see the Library of Congress in its glory and we see the river. … Behind the river there are domes of the museum of Civilization, which Mary highly recommends.
From the top we are looking over Ottawa, and our volunteer guides do there job telling us what we see. - “There is a waterfall over there and there is another one back behind”. The boy is very smart. His speech is “spiced” with a lot of numbers. Yet N. is happy to find out that he is two months younger than she is.
Left wing of the Parliament. It appears like the boy knows everything about all towers in the World. He dreams about seeing New York City one day.
In an outburst of gratitude I volunteer to be their guide if they ever happen to be in Boston. It turns out that they do not have much of fun places for children to go in around Ottawa. No roller coasters and stuff like that.
They are still waiting for their citizenship papers to clear up and therefore cannot travel abroad.
They walk us through some internal rooms, narrating about something. Then they take us to the tiny gift shop and Mary buys to N. a little present. We need to part with them for now. We are saying our good-buys, because we with N. got to go on the guided tour through halls and rooms of the parliament and our guide might be waiting for us already.
Inside of the Parliament is glittering with tidiness and polished marble.
Our guide is a very serious “fella”, disciplines family of noisy Indian-looking Americans.
There are monuments even inside
The ceiling decorations have a lot of symbolic signs
Here is the hall of Canada's House of commons. You see that flag? That is where the Parliament Speaker sits, the media (press) sits on the Second floor, and the sits for the public are higher. In the center stands the chair for the secretary and the chairs for typists. In between of them there is a huge mace lying on the table. That mace is made out of pure gold and represents Canada’s symbol of power. The mace is brought in by the “sergeant at arms”, whose chair obscures our foreground.
Over here, in the first raw in the middle sits the Prime Minister. Other chairs are for his fellow Ruling Coalition
And here sits the leader of the opposition with his fellows opposition members.
The tables are very humble looking
Here goes N. at the doors of House of Commons
A gallery in front of the Library of Parliament
One of the Parliament corridors
Security is keeping an eye
Here is Entrance to Canadian Senate. The Senate is never opened for the tourists. But they will make an exception for us, because of the Easter. Our guide tells us that we are very lucky that we got to see the Senate.
To read the Next Chapter and to see more pictures of the Senate click
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