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Yesterday I went to Ottawa for a day trip, taking Via Rail, mostly to do Resource game things like build some mines and attack others, but also to walk around and see what there is to see simply by walking around.

I took the 203 bus to the Dorval terminus where I then had to wait around 20 minutes for my train to arrive, here it is arriving:

You can see by the cloud cover that it wasn't a clear morning; there was a risk of showers both here and in Ottawa in the first half of the day with a lower chance of showers in the afternoon. My train left on time at 9h24 and arrived in Ottawa on time at 11h04. 

Once I got into Ottawa, the Via Rail station is 6km away from Parliament or a more central part of Ottawa, so my original plan was to walk into the city and then take the O-Train back to the Via station; so I took a pedestrian bridge over the highway and went into the Overbrook area of Ottawa. This is where I built the majority of my Resource mines, I did this first so that the purpose of this trip could be fulfilled and then with subsequent time can walk into the more tourist part of Ottawa.

Then I crossed the Rideau River on a pedestrian bridge; here is the river looking south:

It may be difficult to tell, but in that collection of birds in the above photo there was a mix of sea gulls and mallard ducks. Then I walked westwards to Elgin which I took north when I came to this Aboriginal War Memorial:

Continuing northward on Elgin I came to the WW1 Memorial and as I was arriving a changing of the guard was just finishing. In the first photo below you can see a guard on the left and right of the memorial.

And then finally I made it to Parliament which has been and continues to be under renovation; it was nice to see that the exterior scaffolding was down:

From there I walked a circuitous path to a Subway resto where I ate and rested for a short while and then plotted my walk back to the Via Rail station since there was plenty of time before by 16h07 departure time and I was eating close to 13h30. Of the routes Google chose I took the longest one and walked back to the train station, arriving at about 15h.

 At 15h20 there was an announcement that anyone with oversize luggage should bring their large luggage to gate two. Many people misinterpreted this to mean that people should queue for boarding, and so then more people queued. As a day tripper I had no luggage so I stay seated; and even if I had large luggage I'd have checked it at gate two and then sat back down for boarding.

So twenty five minutes later they started boarding the business class passengers and then immediately following it was all of the rest of us. I stayed seated expecting to board at the end of the queue, but then I saw a passenger struggling with his luggage that opened up a spot in the queue that I jumped into, and then I boarded without any problem.

My mobile device was down to 35% power and so when I had arrived in the station I did not use it in any way and just whiled the time away looking and listening at my surrounding environment. Once they scanned my ticket on my device to board I used it to listen to music on the train ride home knowing that it wouldn't matter if the device went down to zero power (which it didn't).

The sky had cleared mostly on the train ride home; here is a photo along the way:

As we approached the island of Montreal there were dark clouds and the ground had evidence of having been rained upon. I found out today that just before my train arrived yesterday it had torrentially rained for a short period and there was still the remnant of very light rain that ended soon after I disembarked.

I checked my transit app and found to get home, there was actually an Exo train that would work best, so I went from Via train to Exo train to get home.

Overall it was a positive trip, I would do it again.