Canada & Beyond - Day 3 - Part 1

As I mentioned in the previous post, we had to spend the night of Aug. 14th at a hotel instead of camping as we had planned. But it all worked out well in the end, none of us complained at having a real bathroom to shower in, and a nice hot breakfast waiting for us downstairs that morning. We all ate our fill and got on the road around 9am. 

Our original location for camping that night was a provincial park in Mattawa, thus we were an hour behind schedule, so just booked it all the way to Ottawa without stopping except for gas.

It was very foggy as we were driving through the highlands. We passed lots of little lakes along the way that day too.

We made it to Ottawa in what felt like no time, which was good considering we had a lot of places we wanted to see and not that much time to do it!

Once we entered the downtown portion of the city we realized we had entered a whole different world. There were tons of old buildings mixed in with lots of modern architecture, it was such an interesting contrast.

We found Parliament hill with out any trouble, but had no such luck finding somewhere to park our large rig. None of the parking garages had high enough clearance for us to fit, and the outdoor lots were all full. But after much (and I mean much) searching we were able to find some street parking a couple blocks away from our destination.

Loved the look of this pub

 We started walking, and made our way towards the main Parliament buildings.

There was a gorgeous side view of the library, center parliament building, and the Ottawa River from Major Hill's Park.

This is a very luxurious hotel called the Chateau Laurier.

The very popular Ottawa canal on Confederation Boulevard.

East Block of the Parliament buildings

Cool doors call for posing for a quick picture ;)

The absolute magnitude of this center building was just overwhelming. The clock portion is called Peace Tower.

 Another view of the East Block.

The Centennial Flame, you can read more about it's purpose of origin below.

We started making our way around the back of the building to see the library up close.

I really loved all the old wooden doors everywhere. Would be cool to have these around here for portrait backgrounds!

Ottawa River

Cool amphitheater on the other side of the river

Behold, the Library of Parliament.

The detail on this building was just incredible.

It was hard to leave such a beautiful place, I just couldn't get enough of all the astounding architecture. It's crazy to think how long it must have taken, and all the work that went in to creating these massive structures way back when. 

National War Memorial

It was time to start heading back towards the car, and our next destination. But before we left town we found a cute little coffee shop and just had to try a legit Ottawa latte before leaving ;)

The barista was talented at the latte art, finally got an official hipster coffee shop shot ;) haha

After enjoying our delicious coffee we walked the rest of the way to the car and got back on the road. I know this post already has a lot of photos, so I'm splitting  Day 3 into two posts. The rest of our day will be detailed there, which I'll post soon!