Rideau Canal Skating

Thursday was remarkably Spring like. With very little planning, the kids and I, with my mom, jumped in the car and drove the hour and a bit to Dow's Lake Pavilion in Ottawa to do a little skating on the Rideau Canal. It's great the way they make skating on the canal so convenient. It lessens the blow of a $12 parking lot.

We stashed our boots in the white dome everyone is headed to in the pic below and we started out.

For those of you who have been so kind as to post pics of your adventures (Cristina and Marina) and your wonderful countryside (Dorothy) I figured I'd throw in some stark contrast. Having a scant 400 years of history in this country, there's little in the way of 'ancient architecture'. But, the canal itself is a marvel and the other bits are interesting.

Here we have the football stadium and below that, Lansdowne Park.
A bit closer to downtown you can see the YMCA tower to the left of the old Museum of Civilization 'castle' behind the bridge. There's another canal access point as well. They are all over the place. There's little to no official parking for the canal, but there's a lot of steps and seats and 'you are here' maps.

There's K skating by the University of Ottawa building. There's a big, lit up greenhouse on the top of the high rise.

I think anyone who has seen any advertising at all for the Rideau Canal Skating Rink has seen a picture like this. The roof line of the Chateau Laurier can be seen on the horizon.

Here we are in the heart of Ottawa. The Parliament buildings to the left and the old train station on the right. How I ever got to the ripe old age of 34 without ever eating a Beaver Tail, I don't know. But I couldn't let the same unfortunate thing happen to my kids. R's not a fan of sticky-sugary-sweet, so he held out for fries. I tell you, one Maple Beaver Tail is about as much stick-sugary-sweet as any one person can take. And that's saying something coming from this professional sweet tooth.

R eventually got his fries. Most of which were eaten on the go.

A kilometre from the end of our skate, all 13km of it, the kids took a brief break. The temperature had started to drop noticeably and we were definitely done. It was a great afternoon. Really, so easy to do. Living so close to Ottawa, it's really something we should do more. But, it's not to be this year. It was the last day of the season to skate. I'm glad we were able to fit it in.