The 4 pints last night helped me sleep straight thought the night at the haunted scary jail. I was a little cold during the night - that will be the spirits! We both slept in until about 10, and then had our free breakfast of bagels and eggs! We had the full day in Ottawa, and decided to head to the Nature Museum, it was about a 20 minute walk away. We started our museum visit by going in a machine that was a hurricane simulator - we experienced winds up to 78km per hour, it got very windy! From here we moved to the 3D show - we were just hoping it would be better than the legends of flight we had seen, it didn't disappoint. It was about sea monsters that were swimming in our seas back when the dinosaurs ruled the land. The exhibits were all about wildlife, we started in the insects room, looking at cockroaches, frogs, bugs and the worst thing - big fat hair spiders! I didn't stick about looking at them. They gave me the creeps more than the haunted hostel. Chuck a few tarantulas into the jail roaming free and I would 100% not be staying there! Making our way upstairs there was an exhibit on dinosaurs, with massive skeletons hanging from the ceiling. It was a little like being of a school trip - but I had a good time. The building was like a massive castle on the outside. They also had a large modern glass structure on the top, linked by a glass walk way - you'll know that Chris is not a fan of heights and he jumped it! We were about 9 floors high. A lot of the exhibits seemed to be closed. So we only managed to see half of them.
We headed back into the city after we had done everything we wanted to do at the museum.
Arriving at Parliament Hill we decided to go in, we could have free trip to the tower that over looked the city. You have to go through security - it was like being at an airport, it must have took me 5 minutes to empty my pockets of tickets, maps and leaflets! The queue was massive and didn't seem to go anywhere, so after 15 minutes waiting in a hot and sweat room, we skipped this and headed back outside to the fresh air. The building was impressive, and it took us a couple of days to confirm that Ottawa was the Capitol city of Canada. It was picked by Queen Elizabeth a long time ago! We did the tourist bit and took photos, before heading back down Sussex Street to the Byward Market.
Walking around Byward Market we picked up some jalapeño chilli's for our nachos we are cooking for dinner. All the market stalls were selling the same stuff. The most popular stalls were vegetables and maple syrup. There was a famous bakery called "Beavertails" that sold these flat donut kind of cake. They would put any topping on it for you, Chris and I split on, with chocolate and banana. It was tasty! Except we had wasps trying to get some but we didn't mess about it was gone in minutes! Both of us covered in chocolate sauce. We quickly went to Metro to pick up the rest of the ingredients we needed for our nachos! I decided to get a can on A&W root beer, sounds nice you might think... Except it was like drinking deep heat. It was more disgusting than eating scorpion in Khao San Road in Bangkok!
Once we had arrived back at the hostel, it was time to plan the next part of our journey, it all seemed like quiet destinations between Ottawa and Winnipeg. We decided on North Bay, and booked a hotel in this town as they don't have any HI Hostels. It wasn't much more expensive, and it would give us a break from the snoring (Sadly Chris would still have to put up with me grinding my teeth!).
We had a very domesticated evening, cooking dinner - doing a load of washing as we were both running out of clean pants! (It was scary in the haunted hostel!). Our nachos were amazing, I have to admit that I didn't eat many of the jalapeño's as the first one I ate blew my head off...
Once all the chores were done, we decided on a quite chilled evening. As I am writing this, hide and seek would have been an amazing game to play in the hotel...
How many people would be up for playing hide and seek in the scary haunted jail?
I was a really nice day exploring the city, the sun was shining, it was a chilled evening listening to music and relaxing. Tomorrow we have a bus in the afternoon. We still have a little more time to explore Ottawa.