Off to the nation's capital today. We were going to Ottawa. And twice to Dollarama... Dollarama...?
The Greyhound bus was not due to leave until 11am so we had a bit of time in the morning. We went to a local Dollarama to pick up a few things (as we love the variety we get for a dollar or two) and we were 10 minutes early, so waited.
Hans could not help but go next door to take a picture of the adjacent Starbucks. How do you sell the Starbucks concept to French Canadians? Answer, you add the word "Cafe" before its name.
All good in Dollarama - having spent $3.13 on a few traveling essentials (OK, a bit of chocolate was included...)
Around 9.30am we caught the metro to the central bus station in Montreal and leave at 11am sharp.
We have observed several differences between bus travel in the US vs bus travel in Canada. For a start, the Greyhound bus in Canada is much older and does not provide seat belts nor wifi... of course. Also, with a French Canadian driver, or at least that's what we assumed given that he said and communicated very little during the whole trip. You know, it's almost like customers were a nuisance to him and his "working day". However, he did well on keeping up the speed and overtook quite a few cars.
Here is Hans in the bus with the nice 1970 decor on the ceiling.
The journey itself was mostly boring freeway and we arrived in Ottawa's Greyhound bus station around 1.30pm.
We found our way to our apartment hotel - the Business Inn. We quickly became fans of this place. It is a studio apartment containing a small but full kitchen, dining table and chairs, computer and printer. Also they supply a free guest laundry (with about 10 machines), a well equipped gym room, free deluxe continental breakfast.
We also needed to send some signed and imaged printouts to claim Hans hospital expenses from his visit in Beverly, MA. No problem, print in the room, take the printouts to the front desk and they will scan and email to you while you're away. Free of charge. Good stuff.
So, after some unpacking, we went out with our grocery list and accidentally found that traveller's utopia just a block away, Dollarama! Another visit was happily undertaken and we wiped off half the grocery list and more for just $27. Here's Di smiling...
Catchy name of the shop across the road...
We dropped off our shopping back at the room and went to a supermarket for the rest of the list (fresh meat, veggies and wine) and spent twice as much! Di is already looking forward to cooking up a storm for the rest of this week.
The afternoon just disappeared by the time we returned with our shopping at 5pm. Time for some red wine and nice pre dinner snacks. Afterwards, Hans headed to the laundry to do washing for free while Di was in the kitchen to make Green Curry Chicken. All good, certainly with more red wine.
We do a bit of admin online booking the remaining bus tickets for our stay in Canada.
Not a big day, very few photos, but you will have those every so often as well.
Good night.
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