It turns out that there's nothing quite as wonderful as escaping the campus bubble and discovering a city on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I grabbed my bus pass, and hopped on a bus downtown, armed with my satchel and a camera. I soon discovered that my camera has run out of batteries, so I'm afraid I have no photos of one of the most gorgeous cities I've ever been in to share with you. Sorry. I will inveitably return soon, however, and then you can have some photos. Or you could just google images of Ottawa.
Basically, the thing that gets me about this city is that one minute you're surrounded by urban activity, but a mere two or three minute walk will surround you with trees. If you stand on one side of the parliament building, which is beautiful in itself, you're looking at busy roads and tall buildings, but go to the other side and you're overlooking a gorgeous canal and there's a beautiful park just around the corner. The city is wonderfully suburban, which seems like a very odd thing to say, I know. The downtown area is bustling and busy and a bit touristy, since it's still tourist season, but just a minute out of the centre and the houses are big and wooden and detatched and surrounded by trees. Although, in fairness, everything is surrounded by trees. Exeter's pretty heavily populated with trees, but this place definitely wins on the trees : other stuff ratio. There's also an amazing shopping centre, which I should probably never enter again for the sake of my bank balance. Forever 21 is just too amazing. <3
The other amazing part of town is the Byward Market. There are street performers and artists, and loads of crafts stalls and fruit and veg stalls and it just feels so much like a community down there, even though most of the people around are tourists. I bought some raspberries and saw a crazy acrobat guy who reminded me of John Barrowman. It was lovely. I also found some amazing tea shops, and a cheese shop that sells McVitie's Chocolate Digestives. I also ate another Beaver Tail. Hannah is a happy bunny. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer to explore, because the season is ending and soon it will just be cold and snowy and I shall do nothing but hibernate in the tunnels.
In other news, today marked the start of Orchestra/Music Week in Exeter. It strikes me that up until this point, I've been adventuring while everyone back home has just been sitting around at home waiting for uni life to start again, so I've not missed out on much excitement back home. Now, however, life in Exeter and elsewhere is going to continue as usual, and I won't be there, which makes me pretty sad, because I miss you all lots. I hope you all have an amazing week and, in fact, an amazing year (that goes out to everyone of you, not just Exe people, wrth gwrs). To those of you that I know who are getting ready to start uni, I hope you enjoy it. To those of you returning to uni, have a great year and maybe work a bit harder this time (I'm looking at you, Coldrick!). To everyone at home, I miss you and love you terribly. And to those of you back in Exeter, look after my darling city, look after yourselves, please don't forget about me, and make sure you keep me up to date with everything that's going on! Letters, emails, carrier pigeons, facebooks chats, telegrams, skype (Dakin, my Wednesday afternoons are completely free so post-Singers catch-ups can continue :D), I don't care what, just let me know you're all still alive and give me all the gossip s'il vous plait. I'm having an amazing time here, but I miss the people I love rather a lot, and I can't wait to see you all again soon. <3
And now if you'll excuse me, I've just spied a bug on my bed but I don't know where it went, so I must now promptly shake my duvet to death and do a little dance of terror. Goodnight.
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