Email from Caro: Ottawa

Ottawa
The fashion statement: locals wearing Canadian T shirts and girls wearing baggy blokes clothes

Since the people in Toronto were no longer smiling quite so brightly, we took the train to Ottawa, which is a very boring and odd place.  It’s just a large town with nothing much more going for it than the fact that it is the capital and the parliamentary buildings are the most spectacular. 

They have Canadian flags on them, too.  Our hotel was directly across from Celine Dion’s chain restaurant, ‘Nickels’, but it was in Starbucks that I was truly grossed out for the first time in ages.  

Oh.  My.  God.

Sitting in a window seat, we had the Sunday paper and the starbucks was inside a massive bookshop and playing jazz quietly in the background, we watched the shoppers go about their business…it was all very atmospheric…until, I looked at the girls sitting two tables down.  Armed with Cotton Buds (Q-tips) and a hand mirror, they were picking each other’s pimples. 

Eeeeeew! 

I caught the eye of another guy staring at them in horror and then I nudged Symon, who was equally disgusted. I found it was like looking at a car accident, I could not look away, I felt myself being dragged into their sordid little lives and their horrid little pus-filled faces.  They sat there over coffee doing this ‘picking’ thing for over an hour and a half.  It was quite funny watching other people’s faces as they sat down and glancing around they caught sight of a cotton bud being brandished with gusto.  

Even the people forming a bus queue outside were looking in the window at them.  All the while, they were oblivious to the voyeurs around them.  What grossed me out more, was that I was sitting in my temple of worship (Starbucks) where they serve food.  It was f*cking disgusting.

The next part of the trip was the bit I was not keen on.  Montreal.  French-speaking.  Naturally, when a Kiwi gets to thinking about the French, they think Greenpeace, Rainbow Warrior, Mururoa Atoll, French scuba divers, injustice…and T shirt logos stating "If it’s safe, test it in France and dump it in Tokyo"…but I digress.