The real list is so big; I love my hometown and miss it terribly now that I live in small-town New Brunswick, but here are the top 10, in no particular order:
1. Ethnic Food
Oh, how I miss ethnic food. Vietnamese pho, especially, but also sushi and tacky/trendy bubble tea and samosas and real curry and anything Mexican. I miss walking into a restaurant and not knowing what I'm ordering, or what something will taste like. Everything here tastes exactly like what you would imagine it tastes like. I miss The Works, as well, which has amazing burgers and portobello mushrooms and onion rings to die for. I miss Italian ice cream and Greek food! Greek food! Oh, I miss that so much.
2. Museums
The museums in Ottawa are amazing. The agricultural museum has live animals and you can watch them milk the cows, shear the sheep, even collect eggs. And the Museum of Science and Technology has all of the fantastic stuff kids love, and grown-ups too. The Aviation Museum, with it's hanging planes, the National Art Gallery; miles and miles of beauty, I could go on and on.
3. Really Good Festivals and interesting things to do.
Like Bluesfest, Opera in the Park, Doors Open Ottawa, the Dragonboat Races, multiple amazing farmer's markets, hayrides, pumpkin patches and U-Pick farms, swans on the canal, Winterfest with its beavertails and ice sculptures, the fireworks on Parliament Hill on Canada Day, the balloon festival in Gatineau park, the amazing inner-city hiking trails, Moody beach, an NHL hockey team...
4. Opportunities for Learning.
Ottawa has two major Universities, Carleton and Ottawa U. St. Paul's Catholic University is a subsidiary of Ottawa U., but is pretty much its own place. Then there's Algonquin College, with two campuses in Ottawa and two more outside the city and numerous private colleges. There are always tonnes of free lectures, or continuing education classes in any number of interesting subjects, like design, or dance, parenting or art, cooking, baking, cake decorating, sewing, extreme sports, Japanese, creative writing...whatever! And there is a library system that has every book you can imagine in dozens of libraries across the city.
5. Access to Resources.
City-run free lactation classes for mothers, indoor pools, classes for little people to take in any subject imaginable, a network of midwives (they are illegal in New Brunswick) and doulas to use, hospitals, (our town has a hospital but they won't deliver babies, for that you have to travel an hour to the city...in labour) health clinics open whenever you need them (here, if your doctor can't see you you have to wait for hours in emergency, regardless of how simple a thing you need) a BUS SYSTEM (what I wouldn't give for a bus system) affordable taxis, more than three grocery stores, a place to buy bulk foods, somewhere other than Walmart where you can buy shoes.
6. IKEA
Enough said.
7. Transportation links to other places.
A functioning train station. An airport. A bus station with buses that both leave and...shock, RETURN. Here there is one bus stop outside of town where the schedule is such that you can leave, but not return on the same day.
8. Our personal history.
Our parents, Samuel's one surviving great grandparent, all of our siblings and their significant others. My friends from school, pretty much none of them left. David's old room-mate. The church I got saved in, our first place together, that cute little diner, you know the one, everyone has one, the church David's grandfather built and where he came to Christ, our schools and the memories that came with them, the Tulip Festival where we walked, the place where I found a little brown duck sitting on her eggs one day, that ridiculous Chinese restaurant where we had our first date. The bookstore where we met.
9. Movie Theatres.
It would be so nice to NOT rent a movie, but go and see one in a theatre, sitting on sticky seats, hands greasy with popcorn butter. Samuel has never been to a theatre before. We haven't seen a movie in just over two years.
10. Freedom.
Freedom to do things, to go places, to live life. Freedom to take that little bit of extra money and do something neat with it, rather than go out for yet another A&W hamburger because that's all there is around here. Freedom to hop on a bus and visit someone or something. Not being stuck with television as your only source of entertainment. Want to buy a book? Go to the bookstore! You don't have to order online and wait weeks. Bored on a rainy day inside? There are places you can go, even a mall, somewhere to walk indoors.
I just feel a bit homesick today.
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