25th Dec, Monday - Ottawa & Montreal

In the morning, we departed Toronto for Ottawa. Along the way, we passed through Thousand Island. if the tour was in the summer, we would have taken a boat cruise there and admired the maple trees. As it is winter now, all the maple leaves have fallen and the trees are bare, we didn't stop over. It has been very tiring sitting on the coach. As we have to go to different towns, we had to endure the long rides. Sometimes, I feel that the travelling time is much more than the visiting time.

We arrived at Ottawa, the capital of Canada in the afternoon. We had a short tour of Parliaments Building and the Peace Tower. The pictures below represent the lighted legislative building from each state. The first picture is from my beloved town in Canada, Victoria. There are many more, just didn't post the pictures up.
The parking lots also state which leader can park there. haha...

The bell was retrieved from a burnt down tower, that was the only thing that remained. And we found something pretty cool, there was a stray cat home smack right inside the Parliment Hill.

Late afternoon we arrived in Montreal. As the world's second largest French-Speaking city, there are European buildings, shops, and French signs every where in Montreal City. We visited St. Joseph Church, supposedly the world's second largest church. It was a pity that it was quite dark when we arrived, so hard to take pretty pictures. But the church has many detailed paintings and stain glass windows.

Then we visited the Olympic stadium. Before arriving in Montreal, we were told by the guide and also our friends that the weather there is freezing cold, like -10 degrees. So all of us were like wearing 4-5 layers of clothes but it turned out that the weather wasn't that cold in the end... Mother's nature is screwing up.. :(

We went to Chinatown again. Apparently, today was Christmas so all the stores were closed. Everyone probably is having a good warm nice delicious Christmas Dinner. We didn't eat but chose to walk around the town.

We saw a mini singapore flag and the money on one of the stores. Many chinese stores have french names too, it was so cute. We walked out of Chinatown and went to the nearby building, the architecture was beautiful, very europeanish.