Second trip, to walk by the canal.
First I went around the corner from the hotel to get a look at that park I can see from my window, where I saw dogs being walked in the frozen sunrise. I found that it’s not a park at all, it’s the grounds of the Science Museum (where PZ is doing a talk tomorrow evening) – so now I see that I can see the museum from here! It’s right over my left shoulder as I speak. It’s one of those massive castle type museums – the bit I can see looks like Caernarvon Castle or something. There’s also a new glass part, which I can also see from here.
Also, Ottawa (at least this downtown part of it) is packed with very appealing 19th century brick houses, that are like the brick semis you see all over London and yet also not like them, and not like anything else I know either. They’re familiar yet oddly distinctive.
As I always loved to call it during my childhood years, the “dinosaur museum”.
Plus it has woolly mammoths outside!
There used to be a chasmosaurus as well but it got brought in side when the new dinosaur wing was finished. Last night was all my anxieties and now I’m feeling excited about this conference ^.^ . Should probably get on a bus and go wander around down town a soon.
I believe it was in one of the turrets that they used to have a “visible” beehive, accessible to the outside by a clear plastic tube. I used to watch them for ages. I haven’t seen it since the renovations. The “Animalium” sort of compensates, but I still miss the bees.
Re the architecture, it’s always interesting to get a fresh view of the place you’ve lived for the past two decades-and-change. My father grew up around Bay and Somerset, and the houses around there are also mostly “original” architecture. For several years I lived near there, and would sometimes walk through that neighbourhood to or from the grocery store just to have another look at some of the houses.
Canada’s capital used to be Kingston Ontario,(on the border). They moved it to Ottawa because they were worried about the Americans, so I hope you don’t have any ideas!
WELLCOME
peter g
You must see the Library of Parliament from the inside.
Be sure to try the famous echo in the Reading Room.
I did! See the L of P from inside. Very very cool.
Well, it’s the Museum of Natural History. The Science (and Technology) Museum is a fair distance away.
I should really go again, I haven’t been in since the renovations were done either. I keep getting distracted by the National Gallery instead.
Toronto has huge numbers of old brick buildings too. (Check out the Don Valley Brick Works, which was the original source of a lot of them.) This is what you get when people find good clay in the area carved out by a river going through the region.
@3 myself
And I stand mistaken the poor chasmosaurs are still stuck outside.
Some glass work on those 19th centery building are typically Ottawan. I do enjoy walking in centertown for that reason..and the lack of violence and trash 🙂
The Museum’s architecture has an intersting history as well found on Wikkipedia.