Monday, February 13, 2017

Winterlude

A few friends and I went downtown on Saturday evening. It's Winterlude here in Ottawa, the mid-winter festival and at Confederation Park they always have ice sculptures.  We went to the mall first and had a bite to eat in the food court, first time I had been in it since they renovated over two years ago now.  Then after eating we walked over to Confederation Park; it's a short walk, only about 5 minutes from the mall.

We had a wonderful evening, not too cold for a Canadian winter.  It's also our nation's 150th anniversary of Confederation so some of the sculptures were along that theme.



Obviously the first sculpture is a Canada 150 sculpture reminiscent of our flag. The second sculpture has a map of Canada on it. That might be a little hard to see but it's there. The third sculpture is of the Vimy Memorial. That battle in WWI was the one that defined us as a country separate from the United Kingdom.


These sculptures were in the park but they also have an ice sculpture competition and those sculptures are located in what they call the Crystal Garden.

Surfer

Mermaid

Peacock

Inuit fisherman

Twin faces

It's pretty amazing to see what they can carve out of ice. The contestants come from all around the world. It's funny to see that many of the carvers come from countries that we would consider to be warm, no even hot countries. Just how do they get into ice carving?

Dream Weaver

Magical Dancer

Thor

Carousel

Go to the link below to see all the ice sculptures that we saw.













                  

                               Ice Sculptures - Winterlude 2017


After standing in line to see all the sculptures, our feet did start to get cold so we decided to head back home, some us by car and others, myself included by bus. It was an inexpensive short evening out but it did get us out of the house and gave us a chance to catch up with each other.  There will be other events here in Ottawa for the 150th that we plan to attend. Hopefully a few others that couldn't make it this time will be able to join us.

If you haven't been to Ottawa, summer is a wonderful time to visit but so is February with Winterlude. There's the ice sculputres, skating on the canal,  a snow maze and castle, dog sled rides in Jacques Cartier park. Not to mention taffy pulls and, of course, one has to have beaver tails.

Confederation Park

Rideau Canal Skateway

Ottawa at night

Confederation Park and the canal




4 comments:

  1. Yes, I must make it to Canada in the winter at some point! Quebec is having their winter carnival now too. Ottawa looks like they put on quite a show though. Looks like fun!

    I love the ice sculptures!

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  2. The ice sculptures are just fabulous!
    Happy Valentine's Day!

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  3. I haven't made it to winterlude this year, doubt I will. I just don't like celebrating winter!

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  4. It looks fun. But cold! We used to have something like this in Houghton MI....in February. The college fraternities and others built giant snow sculptures. It was beautiful. Yours looks beautiful too.

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