Ottawa - Canada's Capital

Before Ottawa became the beautiful city it is today, it used to be a rough lumber town with roads of mud. They even used to hold races on Wellington Street, the road right in front of Parliament Hill. In 1857, after years of indecision by 'colonial' politicians, Queen Victoria chose this 'little lumber-town' as the capital of the Province Canada (consisting at that time of what is today Quebec and Ontario). Her choice of an unpresuming, yet militarily strategic city was an attempt to ease the political tension of the day. After becoming the capital Sir Wilfrid Laurier created the Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC) in 1899, which was mandated to beautify and plan the Capital.
And nowadays it really is a beautiful city, but it is still a Capital, that is different than anything that we've seen so far. Who can imagine to have a farm in the middle of the city, just 2.5 km from Parliament Hill? And there are many other little things, that make this city special.
Anyway, you can take a look at the pictures and maybe you like it. For my part I would really recommend to come to Ottawa if you have the chance to do.
A view days before Barbara had to go back to the US, we visited Parliament Hill, walked around in nice little streets with lots of shops, restaurants and bars, rented bikes to ride along the Ottawa river and enjoyed the nice weather. I guess the pictures say more than I can write here, so take a look and enjoy it!

ottawa

i'm still alive...

more than a month has passed since I posted something, but I can ensure you, I'm still alive and lately there is even something worth posting...
The last few days of May Barbara managed to come to Canada again, before her US visa expired. After a couple of days of working (Barbara had some reports to write and I just kept on reading for my research) we had a few days of nice weather and we did all kinds of stuff. We made 3 hour cruise to the region of the thousand islands, which starts at Kingston. It was really beautiful and we enjoyed the tour really much and at the end of the day I had a sunburn, but not too bad. On the weekend we went with Lenko and Christian, who finally arrived from Brazil, to Frontenac Provincial Park and rented some canoes. The weather was really nice again, but this time we were prepared and brought some sun block. Of course only the freaking Germans needed it, since Lenko was pretty tanned from his stay in Brazil and Christian is naturally used to a lot of sun.
Out on the lakes it was really beautiful, it reminded me of my canoe trip to Sweden with Stephan a few years ago. We saw a lot of different animals and enjoyed the nature and the silence a lot. At the end of the day we didn't go home right away, but went to the Thousand Island Bridge which goes the New York State and there we went up to a look out tower and were able to take a look at the region from above. We took a lot of photos and some of them I publish here, but the pictures, even though you might think they look really nice, don't really capture the amazing impressions we had when they were shot. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures anyhow.

cruise & canoe