Jacques Cartier Park is on the other side of the Ottawa River in Gatineau. There was parking there…read morebut it filled up quickly and we ended up parking on the street quite far down. Either get there early or be prepared to walk back. It was such a pleasure wandering through the various plant displays. There was a lot of people when we went but it was expected since it was a lovely summer day. There's everything from trains, animals (puffins, moose, dragons), Mother Earth, a self playing piano and of course quintessential Canadian displays such as mounties and hockey players and even a vegetable patch.

We've had an amazing time, last year, and so I've had no grand expectations visiting it again (it…read moreis now called Mosaiculture), but boy, was I wrong. The new tree statue is absolutely spectacular, absolutely eclipsing the lady with the waterfall, from last year. Will definitely repeat, in a year or more from now.

I was at the fair Thursday evening. Was looking at items with vendors. One vendor kept insisting I…read morebuy something when I went to leave she grabbed my wrist and I had to pull my hand away and leave quickly to get away. It was a strong grip not just grabbing to me nobody has the right to grab you by the wrist and force you to buy something.

It was a packed day and lines were insanely long. The quickest wait we had was approximately 30…read moreminutes. While waiting in one of the long lines there was a smoker not far in front of us in line. After stopping and asking one of the personnel on a golf cart if he could ask the individual to stop smoking, I was bluntly told, "This isn't city property, people can smoke where they want, sorry". I went to their website at carpfair.ca and used their chat option to ask what their smoking policy was. Their response was "9 meters from any building and that it's best to be off to the side away from people". I asked for them to clarify if smoking in the line was permitted and their response was "I would not do that". I asked if it was allowed in line again and received the response,"With the amount of people we have on the grounds and the amount of children we would respectfully ask you not to and to go to the designated smoking areas around the grounds." When I brought up the exchange I had with their employee and requested clarification I received an automated response saying they would get back to me and if this is urgent to call their office. Any subsequent questions were responded to with this same automated response. Had I known the smoking policy prior I would not have gone. For the price of admission which does not include rides I find it ridiculous that there isn't a policy for smokers to smoke else where. Their comment about a "smoking area" appeared to be false, as I walked around the grounds I could not see a single visible smoking area. I detest the run around I received when inquiring about their own policies. If you enjoy second hand smoke, this fair is the right fit for you.

Happy Canada Day to my northern neighbors! I haven't made it to Canada this year for the…read morefestivities but I have happy memories of a long weekend in Montreal when I got to celebrate Canada Day with fireworks, poutine, smoked meat and vague French accents. Canada is one of three countries that make up North America, the others being the United States and México. Canada was granted independence from the United Kingdom on July 1 1867 as part of the formation of the Dominion of Canada though the term has faded as part of post-colonial nationalism. And that's about all I know about Canadian history. Sorry, friends. We just don't teach it much (or much of anything outside America) in American schools. I've been all about (aboot?) your wonderful nation though I have way more to explore. Only around 240 reviews across six of your ten provinces. I'll do better, I promise! https://www.yelp.com/collection/Gxf6xvx-hAJmXl4V_7f3gw/ [Review 19963 overall - 96 in Ontario - 937 of 2023.]

My track record visiting Ottawa is fascinating. I have visited the city in September once. The…read moremultiple other times have been in November. I tend to take in Remembrance Day ceremonies. I decided to visit Ottawa in July this year. It was a nice change to put away the winter gear and break out summery clothing. Fortunately, I got to take part in the Canada Day celebrations at Parliament Hill. I loved it! I drove to Rideau Centre and parked. I spent several hours taking in the Canadian national anthem, speeches by the Prime Minister and Governor General, and various performances, both dance and song. I stood behind the gates at Parliament Hill. It was fine until a dog liked my left leg and decided it was a good place to pee. The dog didn't pee on my leg or shoe, thankfully. The dog's aim was horrible, but it worked out perfectly for me! I enjoyed performances by K'naan, Alan Doyle from Great Big Sea, William Prince, and more at around noon and stayed there until nearly 3 pm. They were all great. Sadly, I forgot to apply sunscreen, so my arms nearly matched the red on my Canada t-shirt. Lesson learned! I am peeling these days. How attractive! Ottawa does Canada Day well. It was wonderful seeing everyone in red and white, showing off their Canadian pride. It was simply a great day. After the performances, I went to Rideau Centre and ByWard Market to walk around. You can take in some shopping and buskers, respectively. It's also fun to walk on streets that are typically buzzing with traffic. There are fireworks and even more performances at night. I decided to skip them and watch at the hotel. I needed a break from the heat and enjoyed the air conditioning. I do recommend giving Canada Day a try in Ottawa. You'll feel great that you did. (241)

"Magic of Lights" is a light display at Wesley Clover Park. This year it is November 21, 2019 -…read moreJanuary 4, 2020, every night 5pm-10pm. It's $20 if you advance purchase online (any day of the week). If you pay at the gate, it's $25 Monday-Thursday and $30 Friday-Sunday. You can also tune into MAJIC 100.3 FM on your radio to hear Christmas music while you drive through the lights show. I thought the display was pretty, and I think it would be a fun activity to do with kids. They had different themes through the display such as fairy tales/nursery rhymes, Nativity scene, the 12 Days of Christmas, Christmas around the world, and a few others. This year is the 4th year of Magic of Lights. I'm glad I did it, but I think it's more of a one time thing. I doubt that I would go again.

One word. Spectacular! The place opens at 5pm, but be…read moreprepared for at least half an hour wait as the two long car lineups merge into one. Well worth the wait, driving at snail pace to the gate, as the 2 km journey inside takes just under 40 mins with lights display on each side of the one-way drive. Get your camera ready and as you tune in the 100.3FM, your video picks up all the Christmas Carols. Fortunately, it was not too cold and we were able to get lots of shots through the sunroof. Happy is see many Christmas themes in all the truly magic of lights coming alive. As we exit just before 7pm, we see the lineup way longer than we started. A must see annual attraction.

BEWARE of this company FMG (Festival de montgolfieres de Gatineau)- we bought VERY expensive…read moretickets ($40 each) to see the balloons launch last weekend, and then had a family emergency where we could not attend- we were told in person that the tickets would be refunded and when I followed up the company refused. Also, I found out afterwards that you can see the balloons launch FOR FREE on the opposite side of the fence and apparently (because of the weather) the balloons didn't even leave the ground that night! Total RIP-OFF and poor customer service!

I accidentally wound up in Gatineau around the time of the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival. I…read moreremembered reading a quick blurb about it being one of the largest hot air balloon festivals in the world (if not THE largest) so my boyfriend and I trekked over from our hotel to check it out. It was fabulous! There were dozens of balloons taking flight, and not just your typical balloons. There were cats, Noah's Ark, a giant panda, and many more. The photo opportunities were infinite and I wish we could have stayed longer. The festival continues into the afternoon with food, music, and fun for everyone in attendance, but unfortunately we had to go once the last few balloons had gone up into the sky. I highly recommend trying to come out and see this, especially if you're a flight/festival fanatic! The good news for anyone who may want to visit from the US? It's always over Labor Day (or Labour Day if you prefer!) so you could easily make a long weekend of the adventure. And what an adventure it is!

I found out about a street food fair at the High Commission of Malaysia that happened yesterday May…read more12th. Sorry people I forgot to post it in the shout outs! We dropped and they had a 6-8 stands setup serving some delicious Malaysian food. Tickets had to be purchased for each food stand and the tickets were refundable if you did not use them all. They had a lot of home made goodness happening. My highlights were the chicken satay's peanut sauce and chili's from one stand that sold noodles. I even ventured off to try some Malaysian deserts...I'm not the biggest fan of Asian deserts but they weren't bad at all. There were a lot of delicious flavours happening and even Chahaya Malaysia was there serving up some food. I hope they do this again next year and have more tables setup for people who want to sit down.

The Canadian Tulip Festival happens every year in Ottawa in May. The exact date changes year to…read moreyear. The history of the Tulip Festival is very unique. It dates back to World War II. Canadian Troops played a significant role in the liberation of the Netherlands from German occupation during WWII. Furthermore, when Germany invaded the Netherlands, Princess Juliana (heir to the Dutch throne) and her 2 children fled to Canada and sought refuge in Ottawa. Princess Juliana gave birth to her third child, Princess Margriet, at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Princess Margriet's birth in Canada would have been problematic as then she wouldn't hold sole Dutch citizenship and thus wouldn't be in the line of succession to the Dutch throne. Recognizing their predicament, the Canadian Government (temporarily) declared where she was born, Dutch soil. This act of goodwill was remembered by the Dutch. In 1945, the Dutch Government sent Canada 100,000 tulip bulbs to express their gratitude for Canada's role in their liberation and for the kindness Canada bestowed on their royalty. And they have continued to send tulip bulbs every year. So the tulip has become a symbol of international friendship. The tulips became a big tourist attraction, and it was photographer Malak Karsh, who in 1952, suggested the idea of a Tulip Festival to the Ottawa Board of Trade, and the inaugural Canadian Tulip Festival occurred in 1953 and has been going on every year since. So every May, Ottawa is filled with tulips. There are over 1,000,000 tulips in bloom (and over 100 varieties) in Ottawa during the festival. The largest concentration of them can be found in Commissioner's Park by Dow's Lake. However, they are literally everywhere in the city. And not just real tulips, but sculptures of tulips too get erected through the city. Local businesses even get in on it, offering tulip shaped cookies. It's truly a sight to see for tulip lovers. Or admirers of flowers in general. After a long, cold and dreary Canadian winter (it pretty much snows October to April, lol), welcoming Spring with colourful tulips all over the city is so wonderful. I absolutely love walking around and seeing (and occasional photographing) all the tulips. When I was new to Ottawa, I went to Commissioner's Park during the Tulip Festival. While it was beautiful, I found crowdedness and busyness incredibly annoying, lol. Now as a long-time Ottawa resident, I admire the tulips scattered throughout the city instead ;)

So I'm not sure what it was about this year but the Tulip festival was way more epic last year with…read morethe amount of flowers they had going on at Major Hills onwards. I'm comparing this years to last years tulip festival I guess... They had other events that were scattered around and those were ok but something seemed missing. The kick off ceremony was in a small cramped place in between Sidedoor and Planet Coffee. Most other times this would be an awesome place to kick off anything else but a festival? It was very difficult to fit people in there. I've seen more things happen in the past. It was cool that they had it across multiple sites this year. I'm not sure if that happened in the past. I hope they go all out again next year and do it better than this year!

If you like Celtic Music (that's Irish, Scots, Breton, Newfoundland Roots, etc.), this…read morefree-by-donation 2.5-day festival is amazing. I just found it this year, which is the 19th year for this festival, and it was sensational, musically speaking! (By the way, it's pronounced in the Anglicized way, "AL-mont.") In addition to several bands who are all worth paying to go see anywhere, the "headliner" band's members (this year that was the wonderful young Newfoundland band, "The Dardanelles") gave Saturday morning workshops in their particular instruments (and that means Matthew Byrne, who has a glorious voice, gave a vocal workshop, dazzling Emilia Bartellas gave a standing-room-only fiddlers' workshop -- good Lord, there are a lot of fiddlers around these parts! -- the stunning button-box player Aaron Collis gave a workshop which had only two other players -- what an amazing opportunity that was!, and laid-back but admirably precise percussionist Richard Klaas gave a packed bodhran workshop). Plus TWO concerts, Saturday and Sunday afternoon/evening, stacked with high-energy bands like Hadrian's Wall and The Peelers, plus the Steel City Rovers. All very pro-sounding bands. One of the things I liked best was the Dardanelle's lovely habit of stopping the music entirely and utterly in synch at the end of a phrase and then launching into the next one, changing tempo or starting the next piece in a trad set -- it was beautiful and it made very clear exactly how much practice and/or professionalism (mastery of the instruments and their own versions of the tunes) they had altogether! Each band brough some high-energy excellent music to the festival stage, a substantial ultramodern steel-pipe curve with a heavy-duty shade/weather cover for the summer, which had very professional lights and sound. Matthew Byrne, who also has a solo career, has the aforementioned glorious voice, but his mic was turned up so high that occasionally it distrorted through the festival speakers. Not his fault, and the festival folk said this was the best sound guy they had had in years, but at the same time, I got the feeling they may not have had adequate opportunity to test the mics with the full range of Byrne's vocals for the evening. Even during the final song of the festival ("Parting Glass," one verse each sung first by sweet young singer Emma Hans, next by the festival's artistic director, David Baril and finally by The Dardanelles' lead singer, Matthew Byrne), Byrne's mic was turned up high enough to distort on crescendos. Eh, that will be solved next year, I'm sure. A lovely touch along Mill Street within the town itself, that both promoted the town's shopping/dining area and provided ambience and live advertising for the Celtfest, was the presence of three covered "Busker Stations," where festival performers and registered buskers were scheduled to play throughout the afternoons, far enough apart that they did not clash. From tiny piper Rowan Hunter ("heh, was so good I put $10 in the tip jar!" said an older gentleman of Almonte commenting on Rowan's playing) to a four-piece band that sort of sprang up for the occasion, there was a lot of excellent music *also* for free on the street in Almonte itself. Another fun touch was the bus-chauffered "pub crawl" organized for the Friday evening before the festival games began. Can never get enough trad -- I just settled on one pub, Naismith Sports Pub, because its owner, the golden-throated C&W singer Charlie Kitts, had chosen to feature the regular Wednesday Night Session members as his pub's band. Delightfully, there were Youth Celtic Football and hurling on the athletic fields adjacent, pre-concert. This is a volunteer-run festival existing by donations, so I do not hold it to the same standards as for-profit festivals in the "vendors" department: there were few actual crafts vendors, they were the minority among the single row of vendor tents, which included some excellent cultural tents like the one displaying hurling equipment, along with such not-so-well-known Celtic features as "Costco Promotional Tent" and a Multi-Level Marketing-style "home tea sales" tent. There were a few, and that's all to the good: more, please! Anyway, the completely-volunteer, donation-based status is why despite the scarcity of "real Celtic arts, crafts, clothing, musical instruments, etc" that one might see at a Highland Games or even a good Ren faire, I have to give the Almonte Celtfest 5 stars -- music is what it's about, and they earned their stars for that, definitely!