Epic East Coast - Day 45

I found today extremely frustrating, due to some very stubborn children and some not very good parenting.  I think some of my kids, like myself, need a vacation.

We tried to get to Parliament Hill for the changing of the guard at 10:00am and ended up having to rush there again.  It was already full of people and the ceremony starts a little earlier than 10:00am, as the old guard was already waiting for the new guard when we arrived.  Still, we got to see the new guard march in and watch the ceremony.  The kids are short, so no one minds if they squeeze in front of them.

Sandra then paused for a family picture in front of Parliament, since it is sunny today, and then we headed out to the Canadian War Museum.  It was a bit of a walk, but we made good time.  First, we went through the special exhibition at the museum, which is on the WWI air war.  They created 10 comic book stories following 10 different people involved in the air war and put up large prints of the comics on the walls.  It also included memorabilia from each of the people and a bunch of activities for the kids, including a flight simulator that each of the kids did twice.

After a quick lunch, we went through the main part of the museum, which wasn't as great as I thought it would be.  They have galleries for all the eras that Canada was involved in wars, but they don't really have a lot of things.  Most of it is just stuff to read, which isn't really what I want out of a museum.  They had a section on Batoche and the Rebellion, but all it contained was a picture of Riel, a picture of Dumont and a Gatling gun.  By the end of World War II, we were tired of it and kind of rushed through the Cold War and peacekeeping section so that we could get to the gallery at the end that had all of the tanks.

The big thing I wanted to see was the German Panther, which they had parked next to a Sherman.  For all the talk in wargaming circles about how large the Panther was, I was surprised that the Sherman wasn't much smaller.  A bit narrower and shorter, but they were the same height.  Alex and I looked through all the tanks, artillery and other stuff they had on display and then we left.

We walked back into downtown Ottawa, stopped at a grocery store and then went back to the hotel to made supper.  Evan had wanted to go to 24 Sussex, but wasn't as interested once he found out it was a 30 minute walk just to look at the outside.  He thought you got to go inside.  So we took everyone out for Beaver Tails and then went to bed.  Tomorrow we head to Quebec.