When I lived in Syracuse I lived about 3.5 hours from Ottawa so I thought why not. I went with my boyfriend on a Saturday morning and just shy of the border is Alexandria Bay New York. We drove there from Syracuse, parked the car (free parking with the boat tour), and bought tickets to Boldt Castle. It was a really interesting story of how that castle was created. Mr. Boldt went from rags to riches and loved his wife so much that he decided to build her a castle on heart island. Unfortunately, she died at the age of 42 and the castle was never finished.
We took Uncle Sam’s boat tour over to Boldt castle and walked to island. It was very well maintained from the outside and had wonderful views of the bay. You could really tell it was heart island as you could see hearts in the gardening, the gates, the sidewalk,and in the castle itself. The let down was the tragedy in the story. The castle is still unfinished so if felt weird paying to see two floors of a castle and a bunch of construction, but overall he island was lovely.
We came back to the mainland and got to the car to drive the rest of the way to Ottawa. We crossed the border and got to the hotel. We went out to dinner that night and had a wonderful meal at the Oz Cafe in Byward market.Our waiter was so wonderful and we really enjoyed the area as it was a great place to walk around. We even caught a glimpse of a pretty “progressive” art gallery.
We went back to our hotel to get a goodnight’s sleep and were up for the free breakfast included with our hotel. Thanks residence inn:) Then we decided to rent bikes for an hour. We downloaded the city’s bike share app, hopper, and got our bikes. We had trouble finding the bikes at first but we got some in the end. We cycled from the Ontario side to the Quebec side of Ottawa again and again. I got a picture with the Ottawa sign and some street art. Something Jack and I found very interesting was that when you cross the border to Quebec it was like being in another country because English was everyone’s second language.
My friend recommended Jacques Cartier park. I didn’t know it cost money to go in, but it was a really neat part so we were ok with it. With the Hopper app we didn’t have to return our bikes to a location we just left them near the park and paid through the app. It was about $9USD for an hour of biking.
The park was spectacular. There were Native dances and what honestly looked like giant chia pets. It was amazing how they made these garden sculptures. The surrounding flowers were also very pretty. It showed a lot of Canadian culture with hockey sculptures as well. After the park we walked to a french restaurant. Then it was time to say goodbye to my boyfriend for 5 weeks. He flew from Ottawa to Halifax back home to London, and I drove back to Syracuse.
