Ottawa

In my adult life, I have lived in two national capital cities, Washington and Ottawa. Like most self-styled sophisticates, I sometimes belittle poor provincial Ottawa to my foreign friends. It is, after all, a capital city only by default (chosen by the British monarch for its distance from the US border and hence supposed safety from American invasion). However, the city does have its charms. So today I will list some of the things I actually like about Ottawa, Ontario, Canada:

  1. There appears to be a shortage of single men in Ottawa. This means that there are significantly large number of unattached, gorgeous young women. Meow!
  2. Ottawa is possibly the only world capital where you can regularly see men simultaneously wearing business suits and hiking boots.
  3. French babes!
  4. Poutine, beaver tails and several hundred cheap all-day breakfast places.
  5. Ottawa is an urban greenie paradise. It’s pretty much pollution free, surrounded by greenspace, peppered with very large parks, bisected by a lovely tree-lined canal, and populated by environment-friendly people.
  6. Cyclists here actually use hand signals and no one mocks them for it.
  7. Cyco’s Bike Repair Shop on Hawthorne Street twice did minor repairs on my bike and refused to accept payment for it!
  8. Did I mention the good looking women?
  9. In winter, the frozen canal is a miles-long free skating rink.
  10. Cheap rent.
  11. Lots of government consulting work.

Now, there are many things that piss me off about Ottawa, too, but we won’t go into that today. If you want to add anything, feel free to use the comment link below.

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