Ottawa, Omega Park and Mont Tremblant

We start our second Canadian week in the capital Ottawa. We are supposed to stay in a AirBnB for two nights 20 minutes away from the city center but we still have a car so it should be easy to move around. The AirBnB is a little bit creepy. Some students are apparently living downstairs but we can't hear anything. We go to the kitchen to prepare some pasta and quickly realize there is no salt, pepper or pot to cook them... Petra takes the matter into her hands and call the owner. 30min later, it's all sorted and we can finally have dinner and go to sleep. We spend our next day visiting the city. We start walking towards Parliament Hill, on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown.

We keep going north towards Fairmont Castle, The National War Memorial and then follow the Rideau Canal. Down, the Ottawa river is higher than usual because of the floods. We can't follow the path so we go back up the hill to reach ByWard Market to have lunch. ByWard Market is a district of outdoor farmers market stalls and specialty food shops selling all sorts of food (Canadian cheese, maple-infused chocolate...). It’s also known for its colorful street art and stores filled with crafts and clothes by local designers. We walk around, checking the shop displays and looking for something good to have for lunch. We finally decide for Mexican food inside the ByWard Market building. We are planning to visit the Canadian museum of History in the afternoon and we have a few stops on the way. We stop by the Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica, the Maman statue and Nepean Point before crossing Alexandra bridge to finally reach the museum.

We arrive at the museum at 3 pm which gives us only two hours to visit it. We manage to see the two first sections and have to rush the last one as it's already 5 pm.

The Canadian museum of History is a must. It's well designed and the best place to learn about the Canadian History from the First People to the modern days. Allow at least 3 hours.

That was our last planned stop for the day. We head back to the ByWard Market district for a little treat. Petra decides to stop at BeaverTails to have their famous fried dough pastries with chocolate/banana flavor.

We finish the day in a board game pub for a couple of hours playing Carcassonne, eating Poutine (it is a dish that includes french fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy. It originated in the Canadian province of Quebec) and drinking beers.

The next day is quite full, we start by going to Gatineau park which is next to Ottawa across the river. It's a nice park to hike/bike and we just have the time for a short walk around a lake.

We then drive to Omega Park, a wildlife park where we can see elks, deer, moose, bears, wolves and arctic foxes... It's a drive through park for most of it. We just park at one end to see the feeding of the wolves.

Be sure to check the schedule at Omega Park as there are different activities during the day and you don't want to miss them.

We spend around 2 hours in the park before ending our day in Manitonga Hostel where we are staying for 3 nights. The hostel is quite nice and have a little pub on the first floor, just the perfect place to spend a couple of hours after hiking all day. We hiked Mont Tremblant losing ourselves in some wet and snowy trail. We even had to cut short one of them because there was too much snow...

Mont Tremblant is popular during the winter season for skiing/snowboarding and it's also popular during summer for bikers/hikers. It's a nice break between cities when traveling and we enjoyed our stay. We leave the hostel in the morning, picking up an extra passenger on our way to Montreal...