Single Night In Ottawa



Before leaving Montreal, we still had couple of places that we needed to visit. We checked out of our hotel, Intercontinental Hotel Montreal and drove over to Old Montreal. We parked the car across the street from Place of Justice at a substantially higher cost than we've paid for parking so far and then crossed the street over to Place Jacques-Cartier and Old Montreal. While Old Montreal did have the old world feel to it, I didn't feel it was as charming as Quebec City was. After walking around and taking pictures we headed over to the Bonsecours Market, which unlike the Saint Lawerence Market in Toronto, felt more like a suburban shopping mall inside. Just as we were about to leave the market, we ran into a maple syrup store so I decided to take this opportunity to buy some real Canadian Maple Syrup to take back home. My mom also ended up buying a bunch of small maple syrup bottles for her employees back home.




We got back to the car and punched up Fairmount Bagel into Google Maps and followed the direction to the bagel store. Just as were about to leave Montreal, I've finally got the hang of paying for parking so I got the number off the street and went up to the kiosk to pay for parking before walking across the street to Fairmount Bagel store. We went inside the store where we were greeted by two employees behind the counter. I told them that we flew all the way from Los Angeles for their bagels which seemed to really make them happy. One of the two employees told me that the sesame seed bagel were just coming out of the oven so we should take those. I told her I wanted a half a dozen but my dad jumped in and said why not a dozen. So I changed the order to a dozen sesame seed bagels which was bagged in a paper bag but we were also given plastic bags to store any leftover bagels to keep them fresher. Fairmount Bagel is also a cash only business so stop by at the ATM machine before visiting. We sat down outside and noshed on couple of fresh out of the oven bagels before grabbing some lunch before heading on out to Ottawa.

Ottawa ended up being nothing more than a overnight stop before leaving the next day for Niagara Falls. While we did consider visiting Parliament and Rideau Hall, we ended up having dinner with my dad's friend and heading back to our crappy hotel the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel & Conference Centre Gatineau-Ottawa. Whenever the media shows the Canadian Parliament on TV, they only show Parliament Hill and really never the surrounding area and the rest of Ottawa. I was really surprised at how busy and built up Ottawa was with government buildings and other businesses. I was quite surprised to find out that the greater Ottawa region has close to a million people living in it.

More pictures from Old Montreal
More pictures from Fairmount Bagel