When good friends of ours extended an invitation to spend a few days with them in our nation’s capital, we jumped at the opportunity to take a family trip. We arrived in Ottawa at midnight on Saturday and settled in for a good night sleep. Refreshed in the morning, we spent the next couple of days out in the cold, partaking in Winterlude (Ottawa’s winter festival) and other winter activities. We ate Beaver Tails out on the Rideau Canal and took the kid tobogganing for the very first time. When our toes lost sensation, we went indoors to watch Olympic highlights and play board games. Despite the cold, it was a rather relaxing long weekend.

Daniel used to live in Ottawa and it’s a city full of old and family friends. Many of them generously extended their hospitality and invited us into stay at their homes. We stayed with our friend’s parents who were sweet to provide us with breakfast each morning and a seemingly bottomless amount of snacks. We had lunch and dinner with at friend’s home, which really helped keep our trip expenses to a minimum. Here is a quick summary of our expenses for our long weekend road trip:

[table]Item, Cost
Gas, $80, two tanks of gas for 1000 KM round trip from Toronto to Ottawa and back
Brunch at Jak’s Kitchen, $45, includes a couple of cocktails
Beaver Tail, $4, “”
Pizza dinner, $10, “ordered four boxes of pizza, divided among 8 people”
McDonald’s Family Funpack, $15, dinner on-the-road[/table]

Ottawa: Things to Do, Places to Eat

Winterlude

Winterlude is a three-week festival celebrating winter, running annually every February. Various events happen across the city, including a Snowflake Kingdom, a park carved from snow and ice, and an ice sculpture competition. There are also concerts, skating shows and interactive art displays that happen throughout the festival; a few years ago, Daniel and I caught a Stars concert in minus twenty-five degrees. The main festival event is the Rideau Canal Skateway, a 7.8km outdoor skating rink; we know friends who braved the cold during the weekend and skated the entire canal. Twice (round trip of 15.6km)!

Cost: (Mostly) Free! There are paid events, but the free ones, which include Snowflake Kingdom, the ice sculpture park, and some performance are more than enough. If you have your own skates, skating on the Canal is also free; if you don’t have skates, you can rent for a small cost.

Beaver Tails

You can ‘t go to Ottawa without having a Beaver Tail, a fried dough pastry stretched to resemble a beaver’s tail. Beaver Tails are crispy on the outside, warm and soft in the inside, and topped with a choice of favourite ingredients. My preference is the Killaloe Sunrise, which is sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and drizzled with lemon juice for just the right contrast of flavours. There is a permanent cabin storefront, the one of the firsts in Canada, in Byward Market; during Winterlude, there is also a Beaver Tails’ stand right on the canal.

Cost: $4, tax included for the Classic Beaver Tail (cinnamon + sugar) and the Killaloe Sunrise Beaver Tail (cinnamon + sugar + lemon juice). For those who haven’t been to Ottawa, there are other Beaver Tail locations in Ontario, but as our friend noted, it is 65 cents cheaper in Ottawa.

Life of Pie

My old childhood friends, who now live in Ottawa, invited us over for lunch and they served this lovely meat pie from a local bakery called Life of Pie (cute name, eh?). The bakery serves both savoury and sweet pies, individual slices and whole pies.

Cost: Unknown. While we don’t know the cost of the pie, they sure were delicious enough to recommend.

Jak’s Kitchen

We brunched at Jak’s Kitchen, a small restaurant located in downtown Ottawa. The ingredients sourced from local farmers and vendors, and there are great gluten-free options on the menu. They also make an amazing zingy hot sauce in house. Between the three of us (Daniel, kid and I), we ordered the eggs benny and duck confit both which were delicious.

Cost: $10-15 for items on their breakfast and lunch menu