Photo Post: Ottawa

Thanks for your patience, those of you who are still with me! I’m finally back home and caught up from the first skating events of the season, so the next goal is to get caught up with this blog. I have plenty of motivation, since I’m also officially starting work on my thesis this semester.

So last time I posted, I was on my way to Ottawa. Here’s Ottawa!

Provincial flags along the Rideau Canal downtown, and plenty of Maple Leaf flags—I was there just a week before Canada Day.

The Rideau Canal. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and in the winter, it’s the world’s longest ice rink.

The Peace Tower, standing tall from the middle of the main Parliament Building

Ottawa’s ByWard Market (or Marché By, for les francophones) is its most picturesque district. Just a few blocks from Parliament.

Entrance to the main market building and a beautiful day for sightseeing

Here’s an intersection of Canada and the U.S. After President Obama was elected, he visited Ottawa and stopped at a few places in the market. There are still photos of him hung in a bunch of the stalls in the market, and at the end, he bought a couple of these cookies for his girls. The cookies were immediately christened “Obama cookies” and the bakery went from selling a couple hundred of these each week to a couple thousand. Of course, I had to be a good American, and Chele and I both bought Obama cookies. They’re not really that tasty, but they sure are pretty.