We were excited to see beautiful blue skies this morning! Everyone was looking forward to getting going and it was a bit busy getting all the planes out. We had about 3 planes ahead of us waiting and at least that many behind us.
Because of all the rain the last couple days, everything was soaking wet. We put the canopy cover in a plastic bag so that we could dry it off when we got to Gatineau, wiped off the canopy before we opened it so no water got into the instruments, etc. I thought we'd done pretty good. My seat was a bit damp, so I put my jacket down to sit on. We got all strapped in and while Lennard was doing the run up, I asked if I should open my vent. Now, there is more of a story to the whole vent thing, but I'm not going to tell it here... needless to say, Lennard couldn't stop laughing when I opened the vent and got sprayed with water that had been sitting in it! Thankfully I had a paper towel ready because of hearing about this possibility... I just didn't realize just how much water there would be! My pant leg was pretty wet for most of the trip because of it!
I thought it was neat seeing the sun come through the clouds. We had great weather with about a 30 knot tailwind for most of it.
This is the town of Espanola as we were flying over it.
About 80 miles out of Gatineau, it clouded in and we had to drop down from 5500 feet to 2500 feet to get under them. It got a bit bumpy, but the biggest issue was that we couldn't raise Montreal Center on the radio to get a transponder code so we could enter their control zone! After about a dozen tries, we finally got them to acknowledge us. It was a bit nerve wracking, but we made it!
As we were coming in to land there were three other planes before us and about five behind us, so they were pretty busy in the control tower!
They had us tie down just beside the taxi way and then shuttled us and our luggage over to the terminal building. We were able to store our luggage in the FBO office while we went exploring.
As we were about to get into the shuttle, we looked up and saw some parachuters coming down! There were four of them, two had just landed when I took this picture.
We walked over to the Vintage Wings Museum and checked it out for about 45 minutes. It was pretty hot in the building and we wanted to get to our hotel so we headed back to the terminal to see if our ride was there yet.
Here's Lennard with his dream plane.... sorry, sweetheart... keep dreaming!
There was quite a long wait for the van to the hotel, so we got a taxi with two other couples and headed off. Our taxi driver thought he would take advantage of us and only drove 80km/hr all the way there. Not very impressed.
We stopped at MacDonald's to grab some lunch and then we flagged a taxi down and headed to Parliament Hill with Wayne & Linda. Pat & Lon made it just in time to go on the tour with us through the Parliament buildings.
I loved being able to be on Parliament Hill. I wish we could have spent LOTS more time, but it was fun to see what we did. When we went to get tickets to go on a tour, they told us that there were no more English tours being given... so we signed up for the French tour! We figured it was more important to actually get to see inside, so if we didn't understand anything it would still be worth it. We all had to go through security to get in to the building.
I took lots of pictures and these are only a few, but there are still lots in this post!
There are so many beautiful stained glass windows.
The architecture was amazing. So many details that it was hard to know what to look at.
My favorite was the library (of course). So beautiful!
I could have spent all afternoon in this room alone!
The Senate.
After the tour, we got to go up the Peace Tower. On the ride up the elevator we could see the bells that ring every 15 minutes. At the top we were able to look out and see all over Ottawa and Gatineau. This is the clock that is at the top of the tower! We were right below it!
Here we are! We are still alive!
This was in the Memorial Chapel. This is where they have the books with all those who have died in the service of our country. We found out that if we come on April 22nd the page with Lennard's grandpa would be shown.
This was over in the tourist center. Had to have the typical Canadian picture!
After visiting Parliament Hill, we went to the Canadian War Museum. It was huge. I was amazed at how large it was and how nicely it was put together. So much to look at and learn.
This little biplane was made out of shell casings.
These were all kinds of art that was put on airplanes during the war.
Day 5 Stats: Just over 2 hours of flying. 296 nautical miles. One more city. Getting closer to our end goal of making it to Charlottetown, PEI!
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