In the Capital

A much quieter night last night thank god.  A solid 9 hours sleep helped me get over the lack of sleep the previous night, and set me up for a day of museums and galleries.  Breakfast we had with a couple of Canadians, one of him filled us in a bit more on the floods.  Apparently a lot of it comes from the snow melting, and its's been pretty bad around here - it's taken out a rowing club that's been around for years.  

After breakfast we stopped at the cafe from yesterday that had flat whites for mum to get her morning coffee fix.  I didn't need one as I'd had one at breakfast, carefully strained from a beautiful stovetop coffee pot, strong enough to power a small city.  The flat white mum gave a 5/10 so maybe we won't bother there again tomorrow.  We walked down to the art gallery next, accidentally arriving as it opened.

Flags for days.  For some unknown reason there are Croatian flags all along this street as well?

The National gallery was fantastic, I think I'd put it in my top three.  We ended up spending 3 hours there and didn't see everything.  We focused on the Canadian art which was really great. Some of my favourite pieces are below (some a little shaky).  It was also just a beautiful building.  The glass domes in the pictures below were fantastic to look up at, and in the main part of the gallery there was a pool which could be seen from all levels including below, a garden which could be seen from the upper levels, and a chapel which was hidden on the first floor.  The chapel was rebuilt in the gallery and was a wonderful surprise we almost missed.  Unfortunately we were a couple of weeks early for the Gauguin exhibition (seems to be a trend on this trip).

The gallery.

Looking up.

The indoor garden.







 






Parliament building (again) look at the bottom, there's a light post sticking out of the water showing how high it is.


After lunch we walked across the bridge to the Museum of History.  We stayed here three hours as well, till they announced it was closing and we quickly had to leave to get our bags.  The museum had some really interesting bits.  We unfortunately spent a little to long persevering through some of the less interesting bits so didn't get to see everything we planned to.  We did make time to watch one of the films though, mainly to get some time sitting down.  It was a 3D nature docu style movie.  It had some great though cheesy shots of ducklings jumping out of a tree to Tom Petty's Free Falling.


Totem poles in the Museum of History.

We stopped by another book shop on our way back.  They do really good book shops in Canada.  I've picked up one more book so with 3 and 3/4s I should now have enough to get me through the train trip back to Vancouver.  Don't ask me how many books mum has now.

Dinner was my idea tonight, a Japanese food court meal.  Nothing to write home about, but quick, warm and some veges to up the vege intake.  It's not as cold as Halifax here but it's still pretty cold around here.  High was 14 today I think. Looking forward to getting to warmer weather on the west coast.  

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