We recently had an amazing trip back to Ottawa. It was filled with family and friends, laughter and lakes, and memories, lots of great memories. Going into the trip, there were very few things that I felt we HAD to do, but a trip to the Parliament Buildings was one of them. We knew that they were going to be closing soon for their TEN YEAR renovation, so this was pretty much my lils only chance to see them as children; they’d missed out on the traditional school trips to the Hill this year and last.
We decided that we would attempt to go in the first week of our trip, partly so that Willy’s Mum could join us, and just to make sure that we had time to try again if we didn’t make it, for whatever the reason. The night before our planned visit, we did a little bit of prep for the tour, but we were left to scramble a bit due to a few things that were not made clear, either on the Visit Parliament website, or when we were interacting with the staff who handle the tickets and organization. None of these were enough to ruin the day for us, but it did make for a long day for all of us.
All in all, we had a good day. It was worth the effort, even if we didn’t get to do all that we wanted. If you are going to check it out before it closes, here are my tips:
- The sooner the better. Yes, we went Canada Day week, so it was busy, but there are fewer opportunities to go with each passing day. The building closes in January 2019, so public access will likely end before that. Other than the potential crowds, you may want to consider going sooner rather than later for two additional reasons. The first is that Parliament is not sitting in the summer, so you will actually be able to enter and view the House of Commons and the Senate Chamber. The second is that they have started to slowly dismantle the building to prepare for it’s move to the West Block, so there will be an increasing feel of construction as you get closer to the end, and some of the cool art and features may be moved if you wait too long.
In the Senate Chamber - You need to line up for tickets for your tour time across the street at the tourism office at 90 Wellington Street. It opens at 9:00AM, but the lines start before then, it appears. We arrived between 9:15 and 9:30 and there was a very long line ahead of us. We stood in line for a little over an hour and got some of the last tickets of the day. The tickets are first come, first served, and there are a limited number for each time slot. The tours are scheduled to start every ten minutes.
- You don’t need to have everyone with you to get the tickets, especially if you aren’t there early enough to nab the first tickets.
- If you want to go in/tour the Peace Tower it is a self guided tour, and you will be allowed to do so at the conclusion of your guided tour. **NOTE: if you have a Centre Block tour that begins late in the day, you will have to do the Peace Tower tour BEFORE your guided tour – they cut off access to the Peace Tower some time between 4:00 & 5:00. In this case, you will require separate tickets. They are offered in one hour time slots throughout the day. If you need to do this, plan on being there at least one hour before your guided tour starts. We arrived 50 minutes before and didn’t get to go in as the lines were so long. Had we known that there was a chance we would not get in we would have come sooner.
- You will be told to arrive 20-30 minutes before your tour start time. This is the time that you should show up at security, as 20 minutes is plenty of time to get through. Any more time and you will have a really long wait inside.
- You can’t bring large bags into the building, but you can bring purses and small knapsacks. If you do have a bag and want to leave it, there is free storage at 90 Wellington. If you have a small purse/bag and want to carry it with you, you will be slower at security.
- The security to enter the Centre Block is similar to that at airports; empty your pockets, metal detector, and bag x-rays. The more you have on you, the longer it takes.
- The tours start to run later as the day goes on. Our 4:20 tour didn’t start until almost 5:00, which meant a lot of blurb reading and re-reading for the lils. Make sure you have something to entertain everyone, especially if you are going later in the day.
My two favourite spots were the Hall of Honour, which separates the House of Commons from the Senate:
And the Library, which is just amazing!
