From Grill Forty One G41 at the Lord Elgin Hotel
Crispy Canadian bacon and maple syrup (iPhone) Lord Elgin Hotel
Crispy Canadian bacon and maple syrup (iPhone) Lord Elgin Hotel
My meeting has now come to an end. I have one last night here and then I fly back to CBR via YOW, ORD and LAX. This trip has been enjoyable although there have been moments. I wrote a few days ago about part of the saga in getting here. What I haven’t had time to write about is that my bag got lost and didn’t arrive until late Tuesday evening. This meant I attended the first day of a meeting in my travel jeans and a shirt. Not quite the professional image I try to portray.
Lost bag (iPhone)
The United Airlines bag trace page was less than helpful. Each time I checked it simply indicated they were still looking for my bag. On the Monday afternoon I went to Sears in the Rideau Centre and purchased a new business shirt, socks and jocks. The last thing I wanted to do was wash and wear underwear. On the Monday afternoon I also managed to top up my Canadian Virgin Mobile micro sim for 1 GB of data. Can I just say, Virgin Mobile 3G is amazingly fast. I have a Telstra 3G sim in Australia and it is no where near as fast. Telstra is known for its better coverage in Australia and until last week I thought 3G was good. I didn’t realise it could be so much better.
The days have been quite long. The meeting I’m participating in has been very good albeit intense mentally and the postprandial somnolence has been exacerbated by a lack of sleep. Normally I don’t suffer jet lag because of chronic insomnia, however on this trip I have been a little like a zombie from time to time. I didn’t arrive until 0100 on the Monday morning of the meeting and last night I had a teleconference from 2330 to 0030 this morning.
Despite the lack of sleep I’ve been making an effort to walk in the afternoons. I’ve walked around the Houses of Parliament and the Byward Market. On the Monday afternoon I managed to buy some Canadian ice wine tea for a good friend (P) and some Liquorice root tea from the Tea Store for a work friend. The ladies in the store were very lovely and helpful. Like all Canadians, so friendly cheery and helpful.
The Tea Store (iPhone)
Liquorice root [sic] (iPhone)
Tim Hortons coffee shop. I had never seen a cask of coffee until I visited Canada (iPhone)
On the flights over to Ottawa the United Airways food has been fine.
While waiting for my SYD to LAX flight I ate a little sausage (iPhone)
On the SYD to LAX flight I started with Salmon (iPhone)
This salad was quite nice (iPhone)
The Fillet Mignon was a little tough (iPhone)
I did not resist the Sundae with everything (iPhone)
For breakfast I had poached eggs which were rubbery like tennis balls (iPhone)
On the flight from LAX to ORD I had Tomato and capsicum soup (iPhone)
Chicken calzone after the soup (iPhone)
For lunch one day I bought an Egg plant lasanga (iPhone)
I also had a Lavender mousse (iPhone)
I also had a beaver tail (iPhone)
I’ve already written about my beaver tail experience.
I think I’ve had more coffee this week than in a long long time (iPhone)
I’ve also eaten a few of these custard filled pastry things (iPhone)
Amuse-Bouche scallop from dinner last night at the Lord Elgin Hotel (new iPad)
Hummus (New iPad)
Lord Elgin’s seafood chowder. This is the best chowder I’ve eaten (New iPad) The bowl is deceiving. It is quite deep.
This Caesar salad was served with tilapia. It was very disappointing. (New iPad)
Some of the nice things I’ve seen while walking around have been the memorials, buildings and the Rideau Canal.
Rideau Canal (iPhone)
Rideau Canal (iPhone)
WW1 Memorial (iPhone)
Fairmont Chatteau (iPhone)
Houses of Parliament (iPhone)
Centennial Flame (iPhone)
Rideau Canal (iPhone)
My first visit to Ottawa was in February 2007. I remember being asked by a very attractive young lady from Québec if I had eaten beaver tail while in Ottawa. For an Australian, I was quite taken aback. At that stage I had not visited Byward Market because of the amount of snow and without warm clothes (thanks to Air Canada) I wasn’t venturing out. As far as I knew only cunning linguists ate beaver tails.
This is now my third visit to Ottawa and for three out of three my bags have been lost. That said, the Summer in Ottawa is brilliant. It is warm and humid, just how I love life, i.e., warm and moist. The days have been >30 °C and the evenings warm enough to keep the air conditioning off so I can enjoy sleeping naturally.
With the advent of foursquare, I am today at least the Mayor of Beaver Tails.
I’m the mayor of Beaver Tails on Foursquare (iPhone)
You can get beaver tails in many flavours both sweet and savoury. I was interested to see cinnamon and sugar, cinnamon and apple, cinnamon, sugar and apple, there was one with vanilla sugar and cheesecake as well. The savoury ones looked pretty good but I could not go past the hazelnut chocolate beaver tail. After Hannah of wayfaringchocolate.com commented that she keen to read about some of my trip, I knew I had to choose chocolate. More importantly I know that Bron loves hazelnut chocolate and eating this chocolate coated beaver tail made me think of her.
Hazelnut chocolate beaver tail (Panasonic DMC-TZ10)
