Peace Tower and Royal Canadian Mint

Sarah, one of my other cousin's came to take us out today. I'd not seen her for many years. I'm slowly ticking off seeing all my Canadian relatives and by the end of my trip there will only be a few I've not caught up with. When she arrived it was noticeably much colder, down to single digits in celsius, quite a change from what I've been used to on this trip.

We headed into the city aiming to take a tour of the Parliament Buildings. Unfortunately it took an age to find parking. Street spots were limited to an hour and the multistorey car parks were full plus we hit a lot of the construction around that area. We could get on a tour but not within the time frame we had so instead just went up to the top of the Peace Tower from which we had wonderful views across the city. We were able to step into the Memorial Chamber inside the tower on a lower floor once they had completed the 11am page turning ceremony, a very respectful way to ensure all the names of the Canadian war dead are seen as time passes.

We walked over to the Royal Canadian Mint where we had tickets booked for an 11.30am tour. They don't actually make regular currency there anymore instead concentrating on commemorative and investment coins. It was neat to see the processes which go into making these as well as to hear some of the staggering values of the materials and coins themselves. They even had the moulds on show from a one million dollar coin they had produced and medals from the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

When we were done there we headed back towards Angela's apartment via the university where I met Emily, Sarah's daughter (I think that makes her my first cousin once removed) and to the supermarket. I sat online this afternoon first looking a little more at options for the rest of my trip and then sorting my email inbox which had somehow got all out of order with many of my messages in the spam folder. Most frustrating and it wasn't something I could fix quickly but I knew it needed doing.
 

My cousin Kate and her partner Jeff came over for dinner this evening. It was great to spend time with them. As Kate said we've probably seen more of each other over the last few days than we have in the last 30 years.

View of Ottawa River from the Peace Tower

With a solid gold bar, Royal Canadian Mint

With Emily