Why I'm too old for hostels.

If you wanted another reminder about the downsides of travelling here comes a doozy.  Let's just say I will never be staying at a hostel over a weekend again, the stage in my life where I could tolerate that is gone.  When we got back to our room last night the people in the room next door had their door open and were playing music.  Not super loud, but enough that we could hear it.  At 10.30 they closed the door so that eliminated much of the noise but the levels on the voices went up as the alcohol consumption went up.  At 11 they were still yelling at each other and had their music going so I went and knocked on their door and said we were trying to sleep could they try and keep it down (despite being of an age where I want to do this it still gave me huge anxiety to do).  They apologised and turned the music down and said they were heading out soon.  Sweet as.  Midnight rolled around and they still hadn't left.  They finally left about 12.30.   3 hours later we were woken by doors and yelling.  I mean proper yelling, a guy and a girl screaming at each other, him using the word fuck every 10 seconds.  They went into the room and continued at it and then there was a loud thump.  I panicked that someone had been hit so we jumped out of bed and went to thump on their door to check they were ok and if they were ask them to shut the hell up.  A girl came to the door and breathlessly apologised, said she knew, she was trying, they were ok, she'd called the cops.  So we went back to bed.  The couple ended up in the stairwell next to our room, shouting started to subside.  Then someone dropped something and there was a smashing sound.  Things got quieter after that and then an older sounding voice turned up, probably the cop.  I went to sleep not long after that.  Walking back from breakfast this morning we identified the source of the smashing noise.  It was a window on the side of the building.  So total destruction; one window; one window covering; one toilet paper holder; my night of sleep.  Never again. 

Flying out of Nova Scotia.

Now we're in a completely different city in a nice bed and breakfast, so I have high hopes of a great sleep tonight.  Most of today was spent travelling.  The airport is a while away from the city in Halifax and there's only one bus an hour out to it and I'm a worry traveler so we left the hostel quite early.  Then the buses took a while in Ottawa so it was 3.30 before we got sorted and went and found some lunch.  On the plus side the cafe we found lunch at down the road does flat whites. 

After a very late lunch we just went walking and ended up walking through a mall, best part being the Disney store, and then down towards parliament hill.  We strolled around the Major Hill park a bit. 

Canal system built back in the 19th century overseen by Colonel By whom the city was originally named after.

Canadian Parliament

The American Embassy is huge.  Particularly next to the Egyptian embassy we'd walked past earlier,

Some tulips are starting to bloom, hopefully they bloom a bunch more in the next couple of days as the tulip festival is on for the next week and it's part of the reason I chose to come to Ottawa. 

We also saw a chipmunk who I've named Charlie, a black squirrel who didn't hang around long enough to be named and the impact of the flooding still from a couple of weeks back. 

Dinner was at an Irish pub where mum got the most gigantic cob salad you've ever seen and I got something mildly healthy with a side salad as I've been feeling short of greens.  This helped to offset the Tim Horton's donut we had for morning tea.  Maple flavoured because it felt extra Canadian.  My opinion - it was fine, the donut seemed less greasy than a dunkin or krispy creme, but the maple sauce was a bit sticky, overall I prefer a krispy kreme.

But I'll give it another go.  We also ruined the healthy dinner by having another beavers tail.  Not exactly following a strict diet on this trip.