(Day 1) Baby's First Business Trip

I was supposed to be in Japan during the last half of May but something came up…that something was a trip to Ottawa and Montreal, courtesy of my wonderful job. Of course, I was going to learn about the wonders of research accounting, but who says you can’t have a little fun along the way? Not me, certainly. Since I cannot pass up a free vacation (anyone would be crazy to), Japan will have to wait a few months. And so off I flew into the wild blue yonder…and found myself during a stopover in Calgary, cramming in some homework while mooching the free WiFi.



The flight was fairly uneventful and during the nearly six-hour haul (seriously, how is Canada so big? I mean, how is teleporting coming, scientists?) I dozed in and out of conciousness. So did many others.





I was surprised at how forest-y Ottawa looked! Coming down, the whole city peeks out beneath a heavy coating of trees – how lovely. Soon enough, I was waiting at the baggage carousel with many annoying parties, all jostling together, eager to grab our bags and run.


I have arrived!

I took a ride on the YOW shuttle along with Brad, the Director of the Research Office – we happened to be on the same flight so he gave me the rundown on the sites we passed. The ride was quite eventful indeed! Our driver, whose name was either Jackal or Dagger (I couldn’t decipher through his thick accent, but both are killer), announced it was his first day driving the shuttle and most of the roads to our hotels were blocked since it was Marathon weekend in Ottawa. He took the giant yellow vehicle down the most forsaken of streets, through narrow residential areas, ran no less than two red lights and squeezed the vehicle down a gridlocked street by creating his own lane between vehicles. Hectic! If it was a Disney attraction, it would have been worth the $14, for sure. After an hour on the road for a trip that should have taken 20 minutes, he managed to get us relatively close to the mall that connected to the Westin and stopped in the middle (seriously, beside the median) of a busy road to unload us. Oi. At check-in the girl told me she had me booked in a very nice room – she was right!


Here we have the Parliament in the top right corner with the Rideau Canal in the bottom left. The Ottawa River is visible close to the top with the Conference Board of Canada in the foreground. HELLO CANADA CITY (as I would proceed to call it)!

Let’s take a tour of my $300 per night room:


The entrance, closet and mini bar.


My lighted closet, shown before I moved in and my crap was everywhere.


Bathroom, obviously. This had the best lighting ever.


Shower.


My heavenly king bed. It really was called a heavenly bed. It was decent. It looks a little messy in that photo because I have a long-standing tradition of flinging myself onto the bed as a first order of business when I check into a hotel. This usually means landing on a pile of brochures and room service papers, but I don’t use those anyway.


36” flat panel, naturally. I don’t “do” full-sized TV’s in hotels anymore – I’m spoiled.

After kicking back for a while, I visited the Rideau Centre Mall which was attached to the hotel, picked up some sushi for dinner and picked up my conference goods when I arrived back at the hotel.




I munched on sushi and watched some ‘Gossip Girl’.

Now, onto exploring this new city! I wasn’t quite sure where to head first, so I kind of wandered aimlessly in the direction of Byward Market with the eventual goal of landing somewhere near the Parliament buildings.


Yay! They’re old buildings! It’s like a real vacation now.


Guys playing stuff at Byward Market.


More old stuff – woot!




It is one of those cool spiders like I saw in Japan! How did one land here? Is there a cult or something I don’t know about? Weird.


Parliament from the lovely Major Hills Park (that’s really the name! And no, it had no major hills. And yes, I’m aware that isn’t really why it is named that.)


Parliamentary library and the Ottawa River.


Lilacs in remembrance of my Granny…I’m sure that’s why they planted them there.


The locks of the Rideau Canal.


Finally – I made it to the buildings of Canada City!


Oh I think I could get used to that…”Senator Erin, park your Maserati over here.” Muahaha ha, spending my constituents money like water! (Wait…Senators don’t have constituents.) All ballin’ in my fur coats and bling from Jacob the Jeweler! Don’t know who he is? Look him up. Moving along…



I should’ve probably warned you that my trip to Canada City would involve about a billion pictures of Parliament. Sorry about that. But there are so many angles to be shared!

I joined some heavy metal ladies for a proclamation:




”Hear hear!” Woman’s Lib!




The most propaneiest-smelling flame ever.



So that’s all for Parliament pictures today – wasn’t it nice? It’s like you were there too.

I hung out in my room until all hours of the night and then at midnight I headed to the gym for a five-mile run – no joke. Because I worked so hard, I thought maybe I could buy something for a treat! What will it be, hmmm…


Hoy. Maybe I should nosh on some organic nachos for $8…or a $5 vector bar (I don’t think a full box in store is $5). Right, uh huh…I think I’ll stick with the gummies I picked up from Sugar Mountain for $2.

I eventually made it into bed at some unholy hour. Let’s get one last picture in before bed:


Aw crap, I lied. Okay, that’s the last Parliament shot for the day…until tomorrow of course, when there will be more.