Four days into the three weeks I will spend in North America, and the first part of my journey is completed. Today it was time to say good bye to Montreal – which turned out to be a pretty and interesting city. But today I went on to my next stop on the tour – Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada.

The weather was not perfect – in fact, it was raining since the night and the clouds were hanging very low. But with good music a car ride is enjoyable even in this kind of weather.

We even passed by some of the famous “moose crossing” signs.

After about two hours plus a stop at Subway’s for lunch, we came to Ottawa (in the rain, of course) and checked into our hotel. After getting settled in, we went outside again to look at the city – after all, we would be leaving again the morning after.

On the way, I got “stuck” in a park because there were chipmunks there – and of course I had to try to get some good photos of them.

The first planned destination was Parliament Hill. At the foot of the hill, there are a number of water gates – and I came just in time to see the top one in operation, which is why it looks like the river just stops in the top photo.

Finally we arrived at parliament hill, which is, as the name says, the place where the Canadian parliament is located. However many parts of the buildings were covered because they were being “made nice” for the city’s 150-year anniversary in 2017. It is strange to think that my home town in Austria is nearly 1,000 years old while the capital of Canada is roughly twice as old as the Second World War.

The final tourist attraction for the day was the Notre Dame (again, but this time in a different city) and a big metal spider (in front of an art museum). 

After that, we went to eat some dinner, which (after a lot of discussion) turned out to be sushi, and went back to the hotel.