As I type, we’re about six hours away from Ottawa! We’re excited to get home, but we were making such good time, we decided to dig in our heels a bit in Montebello, where we stayed two nights, before returning to the real world today.

We did our last lock of the trip at Carillon on Thursday, July 25th, and made our way to Montebello where we anchored just off the municipal marina as the sun was going down. The next day, we got a slip there ($1/ft/night, no services) because we wanted to investigate staying the night at the Château Montebello.

So we walked to Le Château, and asked the nice lady at the reception desk the cost of their least expensive room. “$249 plus taxes.” Phill asked “Could we see it?”, which got us a temporary key to investigate the facilities.

It was nice and all, but at this stage we were interested in making our $249 plus taxes stretch a little further, and to be honest, all I really wanted was a bath tub (to help dust off before getting back to the real world, and I haven’t had a bath in a year and I’m really sick of crappy marina showers).

So we returned the temporary key, got a $79.00 taxes included room at La Lanterne down the street (nice room with a river view balcony and a more than adequate tub), and $15 day passes for Le Château Montebello so we could enjoy their fancy pool and spa facilities on the cheap.

So we prepared for our imminent societal reintegration by hob-nobbing with guests of Le Château, doing a few laps in the giant pool, trancing out with a good dose of T.V. and tubbies to wash off almost a year’s worth of boat life.

So that’s the last few days in a nutshell. We got up this morning, picked up our last round of provisioning and pointed the ship towards Ottawa.

We’re aiming to be tied up on the grey line on the wall below Lock #1 (just behind the Parliament buildings) sometime this evening.

We’re going to have an “Open Boat” tomorrow (Sunday, July 28th, come by anytime if you’re interested), but I’ll do a separate post for that…