Sunday: Escape from Ottawa

After driving around road closures for the Ottawa Ironman, we finally made it to Knox Presbyterian Church only about 15 minutes late. Founded in 1844 when Ottawa was still a small lumber outpost called Bytown, the 1932 structure is a classic Presbyterian church we have walked by on other visits. We wondered what the inside looked like. Up at the altar is a classic series of stained glass windows. The sanctuary has carved oaken benches. Locals know to grab a pad from the back before sitting down. We did not realize that, but as we were late, it didn't really matter. Others came after us, likely also tied up in traffic.

That week they had a visiting preacher, a retired woman who was thrilled to tell us all about Jacob, classic biblical stories that appear in the summer lectionary when she used to take vacations instead of filling in for pastors who are now on vacation. We both left uninspired.

Driving was proving to be a growing problem, and our parking space was only good for an hour, so we headed to the town of Almonte. Almonte's tagline is a "gem of a town." It was described to us as where Christmas movies are filmed, which made me wonder what time of year they do the filming.

We were advised to dine at Joe's Italian Kitchen, which people referred to as Joey's Pizza. I'm not a huge fan of American greasy pizza, but I do love European pizza. I went with the Joe Theisman pizza because of the zucchini and goat cheese. Don chose the Aloha Joe, an Hawaiian pizza. We ended up eating half of each other's pies.

The former woolen mill town is located on a river. I want to say the Mississippi River, because other towns were on that river. No, not THE Mississippi River, just a river with the same name as the more famous United States river. They have recently built a Riverwalk to capitalize on the river, but it was too rainy to explore it for very long. 

We did grab some ice cream from a booth before the rain, and ducked inside the mall across the street to enjoy it as we watched the downpour. Cute ice cream names certainly influence me. 

After admiring how cute the town is, and studying the art painted on the shop windows, we popped in and out of thrift stores. Unlike in Smiths Falls, we left empty handed.

The rain was putting a damper on the day, so we drove back to the hotel where I read and Don relaxed in the outdoor spa. He said it was much more crowded than the night before leaving him with the impression others had the same solution to avoiding the rain and the road closures in Ottawa. I was happy to relax in the room reading a book. I even managed to stay awake, which surprised both of us.

We finished our evening with dinner at Meech & Munch in Old Chelsea, a restaurant we enjoyed dining at last summer.

After dinner we returned to Ottawa, 
which was quieter since the Ironman was nearly finished, and had ice cream at Stella Luna, related to the shop we visited in Merrickville, Ontario last summer. If they had not closed their ice cream shop, I suspect we would have added them to our list of cute Ontario towns.