Ottawa (Andrew's mini-vacation)

Arrived home from Ottawa late last night; what a great place... "for a city..."

While there, Louise and I enjoyed the company of my family, along with an exceptional number of polite and helpful Ottawa citizens who assisted us as we took a crash-course in Ottawa Public Transit.

'The plan' was to rent a couple of bicycles, thus enabling us to experience the local city bike paths, but that was soon superseded by the realization that the vast majority of the 'tourist-geek' sites were within walking distance from one another; and each site took a lot longer to take in than originally anticipated.

We did however, spend some time walking the pathways along both the Rideau Canal and Ottawa River. A quick look at a few local maps:

http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins/ncc_web_content_page.asp?cid=16297-16299-9970-101545-29551&lang=1

...demonstrates that the city sports the second-best city trail network in Canada (Montreal is tops). Ottawa also ran a pilot project with the Bixi Bike program last year, and will be rolling it out in 2011.

http://montreal.bixi.com/rolling-with-bixi/how-it-works

I suggest that once the city has implemented a more comprehensive city bike route, we might look at offering a Bixi program here as well. (Anyone out there feeling the urge to take the torch on this one?)

Checked out the Ottawa Mt. Bike Club while I was in town - it appears that they have some serious issues with accessing land for off-road trails, unlike the feast of terrain that we are lucky enough to have at hand in these parts. It was a real wake-up / eye-opener for me to see land use issues of such magnitude in Canada.

Andrew D.