Ottawa graduation trip
At the time of writing, I have finished my graduation trip to Ottawa. We went there overnight, toured many museums and had a fantastic experience.
Every year, the grade 8s have a graduation trip. Although it is not called graduation trip, that’s what we liked to call it. The reason why these overnight trips aren’t called graduation trips is that the grade 7s also went to Camp Muskoka. Sadly, when we were grade 7s we couldn’t go because of Covid restrictions at the time.
But before I even start talking about the trip itself, there should be a packing list for us. We are staying at Alconquin College, sleeping in their dorms for two nights. As for the packing list, it is as you may expect:
- Clothes
- Technology
- Sunscreen
- Hat
- Money
- Snacks for the bus ride
The bus ride from our school to Ottawa is a very long trip, over 6 hours. The grade 8 students and teachers are split into two groups, group 1 and group 2 and will go to bus 1 and 2, respectively. However, these buses aren’t the normal school buses, or we won’t have room to put our luggages. Instead, we will go on these coach buses:
These buses have much more comfortable seats, foot rest and working wifi. The last one didn’t seem to work on the other bus, and it intermittenly cut out for us too. Nevertheless, it was a major improvement from the yellow school buses that you’ll normally see roaming around the community. These buses also have a washroom at the back, but rumors have spread that they are terrible. The teachers definitely didn’t help by telling us before we went on the bus to go to the school washroom instead of the bus washroom.
Other than that, the ride itself is fine. A teacher occasionally walked down the aisle holding a garbage bag, asking if we have any garbage. After a while, we stopped at Kingston. Here, we take a break and have lunch. The break was one hour, and I finished my McDonald meal pretty quickly. Me and my friends ended up roaming around the plaza, checking out stores like Dollarama and Shoppers. It seems that almost nobody bought anything else other than lunch, except me who bought a pack of Ferrero Rocher, one of my favourite snacks.
At last, we arrived at Ottawa. The original plan was to go to parliament hill first, but we had a change of schedule. We went to the museum of science and nature, and there were so much thing there. There was so much things, ranging from massive fossils to beautiful minerals. The picture below is an actual picture taken by my friend in the museum:
After about an hour of roaming the museum, we went to our dorm. There, we got a bit of time to check out our rooms, organize our things and get freshened up. The teachers brought pizza for dinner, as well as drinks. We spent the evening playing on the college’s campus.
It was the second day at Ottawa, and we were on a tight schedule. We woke up at 6:30AM and hurried to the breakfast place. We were given three options:
- Fruit bowl
- Pancakes with syrup
- Eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, sausages and a croissant
Ok, maybe the last option sounds biased with all the description, but that was how the teachers told us the options. The majority of us picked the third one, and it was very filling. We had juice and water to go with our breakfast.
The first thing we did in the morning was to go to parliament hill. We didn’t stay there for long because it started raining, and we went back aboard the megabus to go to the mall. This mall at Ottawa was bigger than square 1, or so our teacher claimed. We didn’t get to roam the entire mall, and we met up at the food court to rendezvous for lunch. The afternoon was spent by going to the war museum. This place was massive. There were tanks, airplanes, torpedoes, you name it. These are just some of the pictures we took:
After this, we were getting ready for dinner. We boarded the bus again and we drove to Quebec to eat at one of the all-you-can-eat restaurants. I was initially very surprised, not believing that we went from Ottawa to Quebec. A quick look on Google Maps quickly made me realized that Ottawa is right beside Quebec. How silly I was. For the last activity of our full day at Ottawa, we went bowling. When we were about to finish bowling, another grade 8 group from another school also came here. Many of us, including me, recognized some people from the other school.
It was the last day, and we once again went to the same breakfast place. This time, we brought our luggages and said goodbye to our dorms. Then, the teachers allowed us to roam around in an open mall and buy our lunch there. I ate at an Italian restaurant named “The Grand” with three other of my friends. We then got on the bus and were ready to head home. At around 3-4 hours into the drive, we stopped at the Big Apple and bought some things there as well as simply sightseeing. There was no more stops after that, and we drove all the way back to the school and our parents picked us up. It was a really fun trip, and definitely one that I would remember.