Victoria Day long weekend also coincided with the fag end of the Tulip festival at Ottawa. We were off to Ottawa on Saturday morning for a three days visit. It had been a long overdue visit, since we lived in Montreal for almost a year but never visited Ottawa and Quebec City - two major tourist attractions in and around. But those were probably very different times, mostly uncertain about our future and with lots of anxieties from my professional life, I had no time to think of any such “luxuries“!   But this summer we have decided to visit number of places and let us see how far do we succeed. Another reason for not making any trip in last so many years could be that we were waiting for Yash to become little independent and start enjoying the trips. Ottawa visit has at least proved a point that Yash has become very matured and he too has started enjoying the trips. 

We had a new experience in terms of booking the hotel. Initially we were planning to book a hotel on our arrival, but I shot down that idea long before it could even fly since that would have been time consuming and availability of three rooms in the same hotel might not have been an easy task at the last moment, and that too at an “attractive” price. So I went ahead and booked in Hampton Inn, which had cancellation policy until 6:00 PM on Saturday. This way I ensured that we have something, so if nothing works, we had a fall back arrangement. We were little concerned with price tag as it was mind boggling $160 cdn per night. Enter Ravi Rajnish. This person normally is as irritating as one could think but has a good habit of always keeping contact with me. So coincidentally he called me on Thursday and while talking he mentioned that he is back in Toronto now. Further, he too was going to Ottawa the same day and initially had planned to stay there but decided to come back the same day (What? Same day? with 5 hours driving either way, where was the time to visit Ottawa? But that is what makes this person out of the crowd! ). Anyhow, he mentioned to me something new about www.priceline.com . One could bid with minimum offer price for the hotels in a city, based on star ratings and if the offer price matches with their minimum possible rate, it books rooms for you. The only downside is that it does not tell you the name of the hotel nor any details until it books and also it is FINAL, final in the truest term like, it can never be canceled. So I got a very good rate (still feel that I could have pulled even better deal, but that is OK, one has to be content with whatever better he gets). I managed $50 US per room per night. This was much better than earlier one and also it was in the middle of the downtown Ottawa.

With everything set we decided to meet at Tim Hortons on 401 and Mavis at 5:30 AM sharp. Lalit promised that he will take the pain to wake us up at 4:30 AM and he did. I wonder we (my family, Rohit & Kajri) could make it there at around 5:30 AM, then how come Lalit was nearly 30 minutes late! But anyway, we had ”contingencies”  always packed in our program to accommodate such small incidents.So no big deal! Donuts, coffee, directions, exchange of phone numbers and Confusion all happened during the first phase of our journey to Ottawa. The confusion was which route to take? Lalit had inquired a few colleagues in his office and someone told him to take a different route which has lots of sceneries but will be little slower than 401 expressway. After lots of deliberations, we decided to go Lalit’s way.

So we hit the road at around 6:30 AM. The first bad news broken by Rohit was that the weather forecast for the next 3 days at Ottawa is cloudy with showers. But that did not dampen our enthusiasm completely, since our experiences tell that weather forecasts particularly on INTERNET has hardly been true to the fullest extent, though this time it was not so and weather indeed was bad there.

At around 9:00 AM we took a break and it happened to be McDonald with unbelievable crowd there. Since only breakfast was being served there and everyone wanted coffee from Tim Hortons again, we actually wasted our time there. There were although some interesting observations like four Sikh Panthee moving around in their custom dresses with Kripan hanging around. Hursh and Shivi were busy feeding the cheese sticks to the birds rather than themselves, which anguished their moms to some extent but with constant denial from the kids, it was normal and we started off again.

At around 10:00 AM having driven on a different route as per Lalit, Ravi realized that it will take forever to reach Ottawa (and he had to come back the same day too) since there were speed limits within the neighborhoods and also too many traffic lights. Also Ravi had a point that cops can easily catch us in this route. So a big moment to take a decision! Everyone left it to me to decide whether to continue or return back to 401, it was only 35 KM off expressway, that we had driven. I thought that while in return we can always come back via this route but at that moment reaching Ottawa as soon as possible should be our priority beside save time for Ravi who wanted to return the same day.  It made few red faces but I had to take a tough decision and we were back on 401. After 30 minutes we stopped at a Tim Hortons. There was no iced cappuccino but in spite of that everything was cool. Ravi eventually had enough and excused himself. He rather left for his destination alone. His entire company till that point was like in most of the Bollywood movies, a parallel story running with the mainstream, end of which at any point does not bother the viewers, who are engrossed somewhere else! We took our time and started again. We survived many a times as cops were having a good day in terms of their business at many places.

Just before we were to enter Ottawa, Rohit, my navigator got confused and I took wrong exit. This separated us and I reached to a remote outskirt of Ottawa. We stopped at a convenience store and got our directions back with people there in the shop. Meanwhile Lalit managed to reach there and was trying endlessly to reach to me on my cell phone but it had already started drizzling and since I did not want to miss another exit, I decided to focus on my driving. There was a great discovery! I found that my right wiper was defective and one can imagine how proud I must be feeling about my son Yash who in his leisure time plays on my car , I mean literally he slides and jumps from the car and in the process first I lost my front license plate (which I am reluctant to get replaced since I will have to get a new number and I do not want to loose 789, which is coincidental continuation of my previous car plate number in India which was BR 16H 3456) and now discovered that my wiper had its rubber component out and broken. So wiping action was as great as one could imagine and in total confusion this was a great addition for excitement!

Well, well, well..we finally made it to Crowne Plaza at rue Lyon. It was only 1:30 PM and only one room was available, Lailit took that and we were told that around 3:00 PM other rooms will be ready. Actually we were before time, the check in time was 3:00 PM. We all went to room number 602 and first thing we noticed was that the whole hotel was booked by black youths (we started guessing from that time on that there must be some youth festival or something of that kind going on, else where would one see so many of them at each floor and everywhere in general) and as a result elevator wait time was exponentially longer.

In room 602 we had very little space to accommodate all of us, but we managed. There was a competition going on for “leak” and obviously it can be “sequential” on first come first basis. So it took quite some time for everyone to relieve him/herself. One could have interesting observation on how much each of us were able to “hold on” by noticing the time elapsed in the washroom! And meanwhile within 30 minutes Yash and Hursh were successful in spilling chips all over the room.

May 21, 2005

Canadian War Museum 

We decided to cover “something” before dusk. The only possible option was to go to the Canadian War Museum , which was closest from our hotel. We left hotel for War, I mean war museum, and I lost my way again (this is normal, I am poor in directions, I admit). Finally we reached there. There was a huge queue for ticket. It took almost 30 minutes to decide what kind of tickets to take and it also took 30 minutes to get the ticket! So we were debating until the end. We had lot to cover and not everyone seemed were excited about this visit and truly so because no one was so interested to see the pistols, tanks and what not! But anyhow the ticket was paid and as a disciplined crowd everyone started off. Halfway through everyone had lost interest and while in the beginning we were reading all the descriptions , soon we started reading the year or names and toward the end we started guessing from distance about the details of any display! The only interesting part for me was to have touched and seen Hitler’s personal car.It was a black Mercedes.

When we finished Hursh had understood something about the war and he wrote the following:

Hursh writes : “Wars are bad. It’s very sad because people die. They have killed people with sword, guns and Scotia knives. I feel very sad when people die. Sincerely, Hursh Jha“

I wrote: “Peace, brotherhood and love, these should be the basic principles of life and framework of any civilization.As Indian scriptures say: Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (The whole world is a family). No war please, never.“

When we completed the visit, it was almost 6:00 PM and outside was dark with thick black clouds in the sky.

We all decided to go for dinner before returning to the hotel. We already had a list of restaurants in close vicinity to the hotel, provided by Crowne Plaza reception. So, we had to quickly decide whether to got to Indian or any other cuisine, it had already started drizzling. We decided for Thai and we reached Lil Thai Cuisine. The food did not please everyone but it was a new kind of experience anyway!

We came back to the hotel and fortunately I got a double bed room though it was “smokers”, but highlight of the room was that it was on 18th floor and had a very good view from the window.

Here are few more photographs of the day:

The museum is just on the banks of River Ottawa. I could not have asked for a better situation for photograph from museum than this, with clouds making my photograph so artistic!

And here are some portraits with identical theme and location (it is only for record, I know it will be boring and monotonous for others to watch):

May 22, 2005

Tulip festival

The previous night we had gathered some information about what to see in and around Ottawa and the top in the list was Tulip festival. We did not have any idea as which location would be the best and whether driving down to that location or using shuttle services will be a better idea.The good sense (?) prevailed and everyone came to one conclusion that buying the tulip passport (a daily pass which would enable hop and ride shuttle bus service which would be stopping on all the major tourist attractions) was the most economical idea. Further there was a discount too if we bought it at hotel reception and we eventually did that by purchasing 9 of them since there was a flat rate for all so a heavy person like me and lighter person like Hursh were for a change “equal”, that was a matter of delight from one angle but not for the health of our pockets. It was whopping $117 cdn plus share of Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Paul Martin (provincial and federal taxes).

Anyhow it was a stupid mistake turned out to be. The daily unlimited ride was only for $2.50 and to add to our insult driver was least bothered to even check the tickets or passes! Well having suffered that blow my enthusiasm had taken some jolt and suddenly the cloud in the sky and darkness outside made me feel even worse. We wanted to cover at least one point of Tulip Festival and we asked the driver which one is the best one . It was Dow’s Lake point. We reached there and saw that there were many decorated boats in the lake ready for a parade. It was a fun to watch so many small beautifully decorated boats with music and people in exotic costumes enjoying on the boat. We watched the boats for quite some time but I pushed them to go for the main event before it rains.

So we started our journey of Tulip Flower beds. 

Since it was so dark and cloudy, there was a sense of urgency to complete this outdoor activity of viewing tulip flowers as quickly as possible. It was a very delicate situation for me as I had to complete so many photographic assignments in the shortest possible span of time. Though it was a disappointment at the first glance since there were not as many tulip flower beds as I had imagined, but then some of the beds were full of tulips in the most exotic colors. It was one of the most pleasing sights. There was one which grabbed my attention so much that I could have taken at least 100 more photographs but then I had to wrap up everything as quickly as possible! So here are some of the photographs which I feel that I did some justice to the given situation

It had almost started drizzling and it was noon already. I could not stop my temptation while returning and started taking a few more photographs for which had to face ire of so many people. But sure there were some rewards in form of some of the beautiful photographs.Well, I wished that I could go to few more Tulip festival destinations(there were five in total) but there was a strong resentment. I felt very sad but then that is what group is all one has to go by the majorities. Our next destination was Museum of Civilization. It was on the other side of the river in the Quebec province’s Hull city. One tulip shuttle bus dropped us on the other side of the bridge and we waited for a long time for the bus to take us to that destination but it ran out of our combined patience. Someone suggested that it was not too far so we could walk and cross the inter- provincial bridge. We eventually did that but only to see the tulip festival’s shuttle bus overtaking us when we were in the middle of the bridge!

Eventually we reached the museum and we found that there was a long queue for the IMAX. Lalit was so much inclined to watch the movie that we decided to rather wait. After almost 45 minutes we finally were all set to start the visit to the museum. Everyone, except Yash(for a change he was fully charged and was not walking rather jumping and running everywhere!) was tired and on top of that our start of the trip to museum was indeed very dry, least I can say about. It was all about how Canada was say 5000 years back and so on so forth. Lalit an I tried to regenerate lots of enthusiasm in everyone but it did not have much effect. After almost an hour or so we had completed the first level of the museum and no one was ready to carry on to the next one. Food is the name if the medicine to cure such situation and so we headed for lunch in the cafeteria. There was nothing to eat and we had to be imaginative to “design” a lunch for ourselves. Everyone applied his/her best imagination and ate something.

We went back in the museum and this time we started with Children’s museum. It had a decorated truck from Pakistan with typical paintings and slogans on almost every inch of the body, the tires were also painted. Both Hursh and Yash went inside the truck and they had lots of fun. There was a three wheeler auto-rickshaw as well, which Yash pretended driving that vehicle. This was a much better section for kids who finally had some fun. It was almost 45 minutes away from Mystery of the Nile at IMAX so we tried to cover the next level too. We noticed that there was a very beautiful painting on the roof, it was simply amazing. The best part was that as you ascend on the escalator the painting starts “opening” up, as the complete view is visible only when one reaches to the top. I tried to take few snaps there but it did not come so beautifully. I was not having the right angle and distance to take the complete shot. But this is what I have for you guys:

The level 3 was much better and we regretted to have spent much time at the other levels. Anyhow we could not spend much time here either and we rushed to the queue for IMAX. One could see the real IMAX projector and the film reel in progress in a glass room while being in the queue. I took Hursh close to the room and tried to explain about how the projector works and he was thrilled too. Finally we got to see the main show and what an experience it was! An experience of its kind! It was indeed a very fulfilling experience.

Once the show was over, we wanted to cover the last two levels but the museum was closed. And that is it.

When we came out from the museum it was drizzling and there was no bus. After a while it was raining. We waited and waited for the shuttle bus to pick us up but it never happened. So, Lalit ran to the other side of the road and there was one regular bus. He somehow convinced the driver of a regular bus to let us cross the bridge. The driver was a real gentleman, he asked which hotel we were putting up and he dropped us to the closest point. We came back again to the Tim Hortons for coffee. It was almost 8:30 PM now and we were back in the hotel’s lounge. Someone suggested for dinner at one Indian restaurant. We started for one Moni Mahal, but it was about to close and there was utter confusion afterwords. What to eat? I suggested to go to Byward market about which someone had told me that there are nearly 60 odd restaurants in and around. But when we reached there, most of them must have been closed and also it was raining quite heavily causing poor visibility. We returned to Pizza Pizza and had a good dinner.

May 23, 2005

Victoria Day

Next day morning I got up early and went for a morning walk together with Lalit. We went to the Parliament. Took some snaps, but it was very cloudy. It was drizzling again and we came back to the hotel. We had a cruise lined up on amphibus which would take us to the city both on the land and water. This turned out to be a hit as we could not have completed on our own a tour of the entire city. We saw PM’s residence, some embassies and also came to know about some interesting facts and trivia about some buildings and places of interest. When the bus was about to enter the water, Hursh who was sitting by my side was concerned for the window being open. So, he had been reminding me to close the window for quite some time. I was ignoring as it was not going to submerge in the water but would just float and it was OK to keep the window open. He perhaps was scared that water will start coming on, so as it was about to enter the water, he almost screamed ” Dad close the window NOW, we are about to enter!”  There was an instant burst of laughters in the bus from all over and by that time bus had become boat and he also realized that why everyone was laughing! He was a bit embarrassed for some time but then he started enjoying again!

The cruise had ended very close to Parliament, we had kept about 1 hour for visiting Parliament. It was not too late either as it was only 10:00 AM, but as soon as we reached near the main gate of the parliament we were told that on a given day only 200 visitors are allowed to visit and there were 4 buses full of visitors who “exhausted” the entire quota in one shot! As we were planning for making a round of the parliamnet from outside, Yash had to go to washroom immediately. The visitor’s washroom happened to be on the left side of the campus and we all rushed toward that. Thanks to this “incident” we saw that there were three tanks and army personnel standing there for salute scheduled at 12:00 noon to mark the Victoria Day celebration. We watched the whole 21 shots being fired from may be 20 feet distance. It was an amazing expereince. Shivi and Hursh had a chance to talk to one of the army personnels as well before the firings and they got a chance to see the tanks from so close distance that they could touch. In the middle of firing with smoke all around , “fire” shouts from the senior army officer, blast sound and enormous lights, Yash had enough. He started crying so we asked him to close his ears using his hands. It was an experience of lifetime!

We had already checked out before leaving for the cruise. So when we completed the trip we had two choices, either we leave early and enjoy the sceneries on our way back to home or spend some more time in Ottawa and start at around 3:00 PM. There was a very heavy demand to visit the Byward Market area. So we reached there. It was a very old market with lots of fresh vegetables, fruits and other home made bakery, cheese and so on so forth - much like farmers market. It could have rained anytime. Seema, Indu and Kajri all were too engrossed in window shopping and some serious bargains as well. Meanwhile we found one special attraction. Here was a person completely painted in blue and standing on a box. Moment any kid would put coin in a pot he would jump on that box and make a noise and eerie face. Yash was too afraid in the beginning but later on Hursh and Yash started going together and they realized the real person behind this eerie character. They had a non stop fun for almost half an hour till Seema and others were exhausted.

We looked for lunch at any Indian restaurant but we could no locate any. Finally we started for Toronto. We took the route which Lalit had in mind and though it was cloudy all along our journey there were indeed some beautiful sceneries. Though I believe that during autumn the sceneries would be real fabulous to watch.

We were back in Toronto by 7:30 PM but it started raining real heavy as soon as we crossed Pickering. We had dinner at Village of India and thus we ended a very enjoyable journey to the capital of Canada. Though nature was really angry with us and always threatened us with rain the mood was all along subdued but it really never put us in trouble and we managed a very enjoyable trip. Looking forward for our next trip to Calgary or Halifax in this summer. Let us see how it goes.