Well, we’re back home. Today we slept in a bit, Mark and Sarah where up earlier, wandering around Ottawa. We all went down to the Rideau Canal to look a the ice and snow sculptures.
Mark, Sonya and I went skating on the canal. I’ve always wanted to do that. We also had Beaver tails on the canal. A very canadian day.

In the later afternoon, we went on a tour of the Mint. Really cool. We got to hold a gold brick. Surprisingly heavy and worth $220,000 it was a rare and cool thing to do. The Mint in Ottawa creates specialty coins as well as currency for 64 other nations. They are a smaller scale production facility, producing about 10,000 coins in a 8 hour shift. The main production of canadian currency is in Winnipeg. Winnipeg produces 15,000,000 coins in a 24 hour shift. All the paper money is printed in the Bank of Canada. No tours there, and no photos in the Mint. Too bad.
The Parliament buildings where having an open house too. So we got to see the House of Commons and the Senate. Staysea and I went up the bell tower. It has Canada’s first incline elevator, that replaces the original 2 elevators that where used in series to get to the observation deck before.