Capital time
Canada’s capital Ottawa is a friendly, foodie destination with a spectacular setting and rich cultural attractions, finds Bernadette Fallon
Explore Ottawa, Canada, plus a trip to Speyside
I’m in a sauna watching a man dance with a towel. To a semioperatic version of Billy Joel’s The Piano Man. No, the heat hasn’t gone to his head, it’s an ancient German spa practice called the Aufguss Ritual. He smashes ice balls filled with aromatic essential oils onto the hot coals and waves his towel in the air, so the heat and the fragrance circulate around the audience – about one hundred of us, squashed onto the sauna benches at the Nordik Spa-nature in Quebec. The ritual lasts for 15 minutes and by the end the heat is so intense it feels like we’re being ironed. It’s utterly mesmerising. And just a little bit curious.
Canada is full of surprises like this – entertaining and a little bit different but always great fun. Hands up, Canada wasn’t high on my list of ‘must visit’ places before I came here. My bad. Ottawa is a great destination for a holiday, welcoming, friendly and easy to get around, with lots of interesting things to do and see. It’s also quite beautiful and loves a Gothic building. Staying in Downtown Ottawa, I feel like I’ve wandered into fairyland, surrounded by soaring towers and turrets.
Founded on the Ottawa River, the city began life as a small settlement called Bytown, which made its money in timber. It became a city in 1855 when the name was changed to Ottawa, and in 1857 Queen Victoria designated it the capital of Canada.
Our hotel, the Fairmont Chateau (yes, it does look like a fairy-tale castle) is centrally placed for just about everything – next door to Parliament Hill with its castle-like government buildings (based on the design of Westminster), surrounded by shops and restaurants and right beside Byward Market, one of the oldest and largest farmers’ markets in Canada.
The Notre Dame cathedral is just down the road, with its soaring white towers and magical interior, a sky-blue roof covered in stars. And Major’s Hill Park is right behind the hotel, overlooking the Ottawa River and the bridge crossing into Frenchspeaking Quebec. Like Quebec, Ottawa is also a dual language destination, with locals speaking both English and French and street signs in both languages.
I take a walk around the park every morning to work up an appetite for the mouth-watering maple crêpes, highlight of the hotel breakfast buffet. I have them with cinnamon buns, also dripping in syrup, and the chocolate bread pudding (yes, I’m still talking breakfast here). Then I do a few laps of the park afterwards to work it all off. Though in fairness, it would take several thousand circuits to shed these calories. I do about two. But fast.
With the Houses of Parliament on our doorstep, it would be rude not to take one of the free tours on offer – so we do. And we also visit Rideau Hall, the home of Canada’s Governor General Julie Payette, former astronaut and classically trained musician, now the Queen’s representative in Canada. The treefilled grounds – all 79 acres of them – are lovely and the free-to-visit outdoor ice rink is open from frosty December until March’s thaw.
We’re too early to experience the frozen-over Rideau Canal which runs for almost five miles through the centre of the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world’s largest skating rink. It freezes from early January to March every year, is nearly five miles long – the size of more than 90 Olympic-sized hockey rinks – and skating is free, 24 hours a day. There are more free rinks at Ottawa’s City Hall and at Lansdowne, which also hosts the iconic Ottawa Farmers’ Market, featuring over 100 stalls of
I take a walk around the park to work up an appetite for the maple crêpes
fresh local produce – a great spot to pick up some maple syrup or maple butter, a wonderful invention, perfect with porridge.
Lansdowne is also the home of the city’s ice hockey stadium and we cheer on the Ottawa 67’s to victory one afternoon. It’s a fast and furious game, physical with plenty of hard knocks but also graceful and fluid and great fun to watch.
Ice hockey is hugely popular here – as you’d expect for the country’s national winter sport – and in fact the whole city is big on exercise. Well, they’ve got to work off all that maple syrup somehow. The region has 800km of recreational pathways for walkers and cyclists and the Capital Pathway network hooks up museums and other attractions across several scenic routes.
If you were feeling adventurous, you could hire a bike for the short distance to Wellington, one of Ottawa’s hippest areas, full of independent cafes, restaurants and shops. We’re not, so we jump in a cab for the 10-minute ride from Downtown to take the Veg Delights food tour, organised by C’est Bon Cooking.
As the name of the tour suggests, there are plenty of both veggie and vegan shops in the area, including The Table, one of Ottawa’s oldest vegetarian restaurants, serving a buffet of over 50 different dishes, where 90 per cent of the produce is vegan. We taste our way around six destinations, trying everything from homemade Italian pasta to chocolate shoes and fresh bagels, meeting the artisans behind the products in these mainly family-run businesses. Wellington also boasts what may just be the best Christmas shop in the world, Tinseltown, open year-round.
For a city that is relatively small – Ottawa has a population of just under one million – it’s a bit of a foodie dream. There are several excellent restaurants, from fine dining to casual, within easy walking distance of the Fairmont Chateau. Across the road, Play Food + Wine does tasty small plates – think halloumi with crispy Brussel sprout shavings, smoky scallops and short rib bison – and a large selection of wines by the glass. A short walk away, Riviera offers high end cooking in an ornate building – it used to be a bank – with a relaxed atmosphere. While at the other end of the scale, Queen St Fare is a buzzy food hall in the city centre dishing up a variety of food from around the world.
There’s plenty of culture on offer as well. The Canadian Museum of Nature, housed in an impressive Gothic building, has several floors of exhibitions and once a month becomes a nightclub, when you can dance with dinosaurs at Nature Nocturne. The National Gallery of Canada was opened in 1880 with a single 19th century landscape. Today its collection boasts over 75,000 works of art, including Canadian and indigenous works.
You can trace Canada’s indigenous history at the Canadian Museum of History, the country’s largest museum, featuring the world’s biggest indoor collection of totem poles and the absorbing First Peoples’ Hall. But we’re lucky enough to be given a chance to experience the links between Canadian settlers and its native tribes up close, when we are guests at the Good Way Dinner, held after-hours at Ottawa Art Gallery. Bringing together local Ottawans with members of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community, an hour’s drive north of the city, we eat moose, beaver and sucker fish, alongside native vegetables, all shot, forested and harvested by the chef and local community.
Like the towel-dancing man in the sauna, it’s all part of the great melting pot of culture on offer in Ottawa. If the city’s not on your bucket list, it should be.