Feb 15th, 09Friday night I made a last minute decision to visit Ottawa for a couple days so I grabbed the bus at 7 the next morning through Toronto and back home. On a cold-but-I’ve-seen-colder Sunday morning my mom, brother Alan and I drove downtown to see Winterlude, the capital’s winter festival. We walked around, ate some Beavertails (deep-fried pastry goodness), toured some great ice sculptures and witnessed the last 25 minutes of a pretty neat competition on what turned out to be a beautiful day. 8 ice sculptors stationed around a fountain had 2 hours to sculpt something out of their own 300 lbs block of ice. They used drills, chisels, hot irons and real live chainsaws to carve, shape and finish their creations. As the countdown was going, snow was flying into the crowd who looked on in awe…..or mild interest depending on the person. In the end there stood, amongst others, a swan, Pegasus the flying horse, a ballerina, and a fish eating a fish eating a smaller fish. As we walked briskly back to the car I was more impressed than my toes were cold.
