Kingston and Ottawa

A few weeks ago a buddy of mine sent out an email to all the students from our first year at the castle in England, asking us to show up April 1st for a few drinks at a pub in Kingston, where most of the castle kids go to Queen's University. On a whim, I decided I might as well make the trek out east, as I had never managed to go visit my old friends out there and had only seen a few of them since I left the castle three years ago.

I stayed at Bill and Alvin's place from the 31st to the 3rd. Bill was my roommate in the legendary room B120 in Bader Hall back in our castle days. Alvin was a good friend and student govt president that year.




Bill and Alvin have a really nice foosball table in their house. The players are all the same colour - silver - so it was hard for me to figure out which ones were my team but I got used to it.






The first night I was in Kingston was the formal dinner/dance event for the grads of the year, so a bunch of people were all dressed up when we went and did the rounds of the local residents. Two particularly crazy former Bader residents, now living in Kingston and preparing to go party, were Bunny and Amy.




On the 1st, we headed to Tir Nan Og pub to meet up with old friends. While Bill and Alvin see these people regularly at Queen's, I was excited to see them all again after so many years. They all looked almost exactly the same as in first year!

Bunny, Bill, Alvin, Janelle, and Christine (I see her all the time at UBC):




Luke, also known as Puke by some at the castle after one not-so-fun end to an evening of drinking:




Danielle and Lauren (I've bumped into her in Vancouver a few times over the years):




Paige, Amanda (visited me in Vancouver and I saw her in Australia), and Emma:




Andrei and Trini:




Ashik:




Bill, aka Beej, Billiam, William, possibly the best roommate ever:




Rob:




Rob's little brother, Johnny:




In Kingston I basically just spent the evenings out with friends and the days sleeping and eating... then at 7am yesterday Bill drove me to the bus station and I headed for Ottawa to catch my plane home.

I got to Ottawa at 9am and my flight wasn't til 4pm so I decided to have a look around. I was in Ottawa in grade 11 for a few days but didn't get to leave the huge school group I was with to explore on my own. This time I had to figure out the transit system, which luckily is a good system and wasn't too difficult to use.

Once in the downtown core, I spent about 4 hours walking around. Of course I walked past Parliament, on the first day back in session with the new Harper government:




While I was walking, I looked up and saw a plane carrying a message and laughed my ass off when I realized what it said:




The bell from the old tower is on display outside with a very interesting little description on a plaque:





I then headed down the road, past a memorial to peacekeeping:




I decided to take a tour of the Royal Mint, since the National War Museum was closed (Mondays are not so great in Ottawa). We weren't allowed to take any photos at all inside the mint. It wasn't a very interesting tour, but it helped me waste about an hour of my time.




It was a bit cold and somewhat windy, so the less fortunate in town were bundled up quite a bit:




Finally, I caught a bus to the airport, spent a couple hours there reading my book and sleeping, then flew to Calgary which looks like this from the air:




From Calgary I flew to Vancouver on a half empty plane and Dad came to pick me up and drive me home, and that's the end of my weekend adventure in Ontario.