Parlez-vous Francais?

24^th June Friday

We slept in that morning and were only moderately disturbed by our roomies, including a very elusive Asian man sleeping underneath Alice who never seems to be around apart from late afternoons. After a nutritious breakfast comprising jam on toast, we headed out into Otttawa, praying that it wouldn’t rain. Since we were in the capital, we made the trip to Parliament Hill. There were free tours, ours was obviously in English (the tour guides could switch between English and French mid-sentence – we were very impressed!). We were shown all round the building, although we weren’t allowed in the House of Commons because all the MPs were in there discussing the postal strike, and had been ALL night! I suppose the benefit of a postal strike is that we didn’t need to feel so guilty about still not managing to post some of our final postcards. For the locals, there is no benefit- profound insight right there. We saw a picture of the House of Commons though, and to be honest it all looked very familiar, which is probably because it was based on the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, which is rather cool.

After the tour we sat outside on one of the stone walls amongst all the statues of famous Canadian politicians and ate our packed lunch (yes we were looking very classy sat in the shadows of people including Queen Victoria). After this lunch, a kind policeman started talking to us, and we all got some photos with him. Before sending us on our way, he gave us each a cute little pin with the Canadian flag on it which was nice!

Next stop on our fleeting tour of Ottawa was the National Gallery. There was an exhibition going on about this artist called Caravaggio. He is famed for his paintings, which were often depicting ugly images, which was almost unheard of at this time. He inspired many other artists. He was good, we’ll give him that. There was an interactive section where you could dress up and pose in period costume like you were off of a Caravaggio painting. Here is our attempt:

Just across the bridge from Ottawa was Quebec. We decided to walk across the bridge and set foot in this exciting new province. In Quebec they speak French obviously, so in an attempt to embrace a new cultural experience we decided to try and speak only French whilst there. Almost as soon as we set foot across the bridge spanning the Ontario River it started to rain, really really heavily. Undetered we ploughed on with cries of “il pleut! Il pleut!” (because thats pretty much all we could say!). At the end of our epic voyage across the bridge, and upon reaching the new and exciting promised land of Quebec, we hastily shetlered from the rain under the eaves of the National Museum of Civilisation. Struggling to decide what to do, especially trying to discuss it in French, we spied upon a bus making its way through the downpour. Alice bravely ran out to flag down the bus, at which the bus driver took pity on us and pulled over.  Apparently “Je voudrais un bus returner a la hostel” was not good enough instructions for Quebecian bus driver so we soon gave up and reverted back to English, much to his relief I’m sure. Our excursion into Quebec was short but quite the adventure.

Some of us appreciated the rain more than others...

On the way back we sheltered from the rain in a shopping mall within which there was a La Senza sale that had attracted just about every girl in Canada. We joined the fray and emerged an hour later with a load more underwear, not only was it cheap, but it also means we don’t have to do any washing for a few more days! J we also stopped at a ‘grocery store’ for groceries. obviously.

Back at the jail hostel we made a huge amount of very excellent pasta which we gobbled down. After a bit of faffing with showers and catching up on this blog (we’re about a week behind if you haven’t noticed!) We ordered a pitcher of beer at the hostel bar, drank it and headed off into the night...

It was our first night out in the capital of a country where we were completely allowed to go anywhere we liked, and we didn’t know where to go. So following one of the instructions from aone of the hostel staff we hit the ‘strip’ and didn’t see very much. We walked into a bar and asked the barman what to do. He pointed us in the direction of upstairs. To be honest, we should have spotted the signs: the bar was called ‘Kinkis’, we got our hand stamped by a woman with very short hair, sporting a wife beater with lots of tattoos, the stamp was a twist on the female symbol, everyone comes out for a smoke looked similar with equally short hair and plentiful tattoos. Yes, we’d done it again. Somehow we’d managed to end up in another gay bar. Determined to get our $3 worth, we carried on regardless. After not very long the whole situation got a bit too awkward to handle. We tried hard not to make eye contact for fear of any unwanted attention, but I think it was quite obvious we had come to the wrong place. We escaped back downstairs to confront the bar tender who’d sent us. He turned out to be a very nice man called Sean who gave us discounted cocktails (possibly he felt bad for our traumatic experience). Anyway, he suggested another club with whom he had ‘contacts’. He texted his friend working at ‘Mercury Lounge’ who agreed to let us in for free! At the club however, the lady didn’t seem convinced that we shouldn’t pay anything. We tried to turn on the British charm but were saved fairly quickly when Sean’s friend and our saviour Zach, turned up and said we were on the guest list. We even got VIP entrance free of charge! Unfortunately we’d missed the live band but did enjoy the music. In the lounge part of the Mercury Lounge we got chatting to some Canadians, one of which said she was getting a coach the next morning.