Ottawa day 2
2011/09/17
Today was all about hitting the local museums. I got a multi-museum passport that covers something like 11 of them.
Canadian Museum of Science & Technology
This was actually very much like the Ontario Science Center, though a bit smaller and with fewer interactive exhibits.
They had some steam locomotives that you could go inside the cabins of, which was cool.
There was an exhibit on Canadian-made automotives. This one was steam-powered, manufactured by a jeweler and had no brakes:
And I’m sure you all recognize this lovely little thing:
A mock-up of the cargo bay control area of the Space Shuttle (yes, with a Canadarm and no, you couldn’t move it):
Mockup of a Tokamak fusion generator. Sadly nonfunctional, but it had pulsating purple lights inside, and that’s always impressive.
Quite a few other interesting exhibits, but like most educational museum-type stuff, not terribly photogenic.
Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
Sadly I wasn’t able to get one of the biplane rides today, but for reference they do allow cameras on the flights. I wanted to take the flight over the parliament buildings. Oh well, next time.
The rest of the museum is pretty nice. Assorted pictures:
And yes, that hangar would make a great storage room, workshop and living space for me.
Canadian Museum of Civilization
Which includes the relatively small Canadian Postal Museum (mainly about the origins of mail delivery and postage stamps, with a very large collection of Canadian stamps) and Canadian Childrens’ Museum (mostly interactive stuff for kids).
It’s a decent museum, but…
I liked the postal museum especially,
but the large section on aboriginal history didn’t interest me much,
(although this looks awfully familiar):
and the well done Canadian history section was for me a repeat of the more authentic stuff I’ve seen at regional museums and places like Upper Canada Village, so I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures.
They did have an interesting temporary exhibit on Japan, but photos weren’t allowed in that section. That’s pretty typical of museums, I’ve found – no flash photography, and no photography in the temporary exhibits for some reason.
Shot of Parliament and the core hotel from the museum grounds:
And that pretty much ate up the whole day. Still a couple of museums, the art gallery and the mint that I haven’t seen, but they can wait for another visit, another time.
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