Tulips tulips tulips.

Fair warning, today's post will be mostly photos of tulips.

At breakfast this morning we met a handful of others coming for the tulip festival, one of whom worked in the maple syrup business which was interesting.  She was able to roll off a few details about maple syrup to us over our crepes with fake syrup.  Then it was a bus out to Commissioner's Park to see the tulips as it was predicted to be the first fine morning we've had here in Ottawa.  As you'll see I had fun with the camera I'm borrowing from mum.  I also had a few goes at taking a selfie - it is not a skill I possess.

The story behind why they have a tulip festival is pretty cool. In 1945 the Dutch Royal family sent 100,000 bulbs to Ottawa to thank the Canadians for liberating the Netherlands during the war.  They planted them along Parliament Hill and supposedly the royal family liked it so much they sent more.  According to wikipedia they still send 20,000 bulbs every year.

Random patch of bluebells amongst a sea of tulips.

Escaping.

We walked back through a suburb called the Glebe to the Nature Museum.  The kind of neighbourhood with signs like this.

We stopped at the nature museum for lunch and then wandered the live insects room (great, creepy), the bird room (the best, helped identify a couple of birds we've seen), the ocean room (giant blue whale skeleton) and the fossils room (dinosaurs).

Baby Mammoth.

More colourful things.

Dinner was the closest place to our bnb as we had nothing more we wanted to do and I needed some time off my feet so we came back for a break.  The closest place was a pub called the Moondog, it was....quiet.  We were the only people in there.  It was also pretty basic borderline scunghy pub, but the food was fine and the poutine was decent (finally ticked off poutine).  Travel day tomorrow - off to Toronto. 

Our BnB.