Thursday 3rd October

One of the things on Tania's list of attractions in Ottawa was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stables, the home of the world famous RCMP Musical Ride ! We are sure you have heard of it ! This school has about 90 horses, all black, 32 that perform in the travelling musical show and the others for cermonial duties. They breed their own horses which originate from Hanover in Germany. The shows are mainly run in provincial Canada, but sometimes they get invited overseas, mainly to England and Europe. This free tour shows us through the stables and training yards, and was very enjoyable. It turned out to be about an 8 minute drive from the apartment we were staying at in Ottawa which was a bonus.

The stables are super clean and staff are very proud of the horses and enjoy showing them to the public. The riders are regular police officers who must have completed 2 years service, then they can apply to join the school, typically for a three year term. Amazingly, they do not have to have any equestrian experience, they get trained from scratch and most have never even been on a horse ! The shows they give are for charity raising events all over the country.

As a matter of interest, the body of the royal carriage shown above was manufactured in Melbourne in the 1890's by Ewing Bros. It was an order for the first Governor General of Australia, Lord Hopetuon, who then took it back with him to England. He then sold it to Earl Grey upon his appointment as the 9th Governor General to Canada. The sale price was $4,000.00

We then headed back into Downtown to continue our exploration, which included Byward Market, Rideau Canal, the Canadian Government Senate Building and Chinatown.

Weather was around 7 degrees today, very chilly and a few spots of rain as we walked around. Still liked Ottawa and glad we stopped here for a look.

There were some murals scattered around the town as well. Today we walked nearly 18,000 steps and 14km, with the map below showing the areas we walked in the city of Ottawa over 2 days exploring and visiting the sights.