Canada Day long weekend

My friend Karen has a brother Paul who lives in Ottawa with his family (Jen, Gillian and Megan).  They were kind enough to invite us to spend the Canada Day weekend with them.

We left Saturday morning by 8:30am taking Karen’s new car.  Boy does it drive nice on the highway.  We got to the other side of Toronto and then we were stuck in traffic for about 1 hour.  Once we got going again, we arrived in Ottawa by 3pm.  The last time we visited with the Ottawa Maloneys was at Christmas time when I took the Greyhound Bus.  We had some snacks and then we had a fabulous BBQ dinner.

We headed downtown to Parliament Hill to catch some of the Canada Day festivities.  I’ve never been here on Canada Day and all I have to say is that it’s just crazy.  There were tons of people.  They set up a stage in front of the buildings and had entertainment.  People were dancing, laughing … just generally having a good time.  The funniest thing I saw that I wish I took a picture of was an RCMP officier making a guy to dump his Molson Canadian in the garbage can.  How Canadian is that!  I’m sure I would have wrapped up the “O Canada” photography category for the Paris Fair.  We then headed over to Andrew Haydon park to enjoy the fireworks in the rain.

We spent most of Sunday just hanging around the house and visiting.  Luckily for us, the RCMP musical ride was performing their sunset ceremonies at the RCMP stables.  It was stunning.  I can’t believe the choreography that happens during the show with 32 horses.  Afterwards you can go to the stables to check out the horses and more importantly, check out the officers.  The best part of the whole show was that it was free.  If one of us doesn’t win the “O Canada” category at the Paris Fair, I will be very disappointed.  All of a sudden, it was Monday and we had make our way back home.

A big thank you to Paul, Jen, Gillian and Megan for making our Canada Day weekend truly enjoyable.