A Walk in 6 Snapshots

What does a 30 minute morning walking commute look like? I can't tell you...but I can SHOW you!!!

BAM! ZAM! (Imagine smoke and fireworks).

5 minutes: at about the five minute mark from my house (or Margot's school if I drop Margot off) I'm on the edge of my neighborhood. Walk around this corner and you're essentially out of Hintonburg.*

Leaving the Shire

*Wikipedia lists Hintonburg's borders as slightly larger. I'm sure that's correct but the "feel" of Hintonburg changes in this direction (west) once you past a street called Bayswater.

10 minutes: the 10-minute mark is kindof in a no-man's land between Hintonburg and another neighborhood, little Italy. It's around this point that I go up a small hill and I get the only "view" on my trip - a glimpse of downtown Ottawa. It's not much but the morning light hits the buildings at the right spots so I like it.

The Big City

15 minutes: well that was a bit of a jip! In between the 10 and 15 minute mark was littly Italy, which I was hoping to talk about. But I'm  not going to because by 15 minutes I've passed that 'hood....

...well almost. Continuing my westward journey I run smack into St. Anthony of Padua Church, which played an important part of the local Italian community in Ottawa...or so Wikipedia tells me. Personal tidbit: I have a friend who got married here.

20 minutes: ah now we're hitting the action -  the intersection of Bronson and Gladstone. At 7:50 am it's still relatively quiet but give in another 30 minutes and it's jammed packed.

Instant cure for the blues if you're a walker : walk by a gridlocked intersection.

25 minutes: just past Bronson is the neighborhood of Centretown. When I was a student a lot of my friends live here but it's more diverse than I remember. I see lots of families and retirees as well as students in the morning.

A quiet oasis

A quirky thing about this neighbourhood is that its actually very hard to get to by car. Most of the roads are one way pointing out of the neighbourhood. As a walker, I like that because it means there's very little traffic on the streets and it's very calm.

30 minutes: the 30-minute mark is almost the end of the journey. I'm at the border of Centretown at this point and only a few minutes to my office. It's not a particularly nice area (there's a bus station nearby, which doesn't exactly add a cosmopolitan flair) but hey that's the route.

So there you go! Now you know what its like to walk to work in Ottawa.

Magic :)