Rideau Falls

We saw Rideau Falls. It was where the Rideau river met the Ottawa River. There was a small island there and we saw some beavers. We also saw a big gun from WWII. The actual falls had two parts. The first part was bigger and cooler than the second part and we picked dandelions and threw them off the bridge and watched them go over the falls.

Hershey Pa

Hershey Story was a museum about the history of Hershey. It had cool things in it like the first conching machine and an exhibit on Hershey special wrappers and boxes and logos. You could even make your own wrapper and add pictures that were on real Hershey wrappers back then. There were also exhibits on other chocolates like Reeses and Krakel and those stuff. It was cool because outside, all the streetlights were shaped like Hershey kisses and the road was brown like chocolate. But, I don't think that the residents liked us because we got honked 7 times!!! There was also the Hotel Hershey which was like a French chateau but it had a huge lawn and on it, spelled out in giant letters that were made with stones, it said WELCOME HERSHEY. We also saw the Hershey amusement park too. It had 2 really tall rides that looked pretty scary but we couldn't see past them. We didn't go to Hershey park but we did go to the Chocolate world. When we got inside, we went to the chocolate tour. It was a slow ride that showed every step of the chocolate making process. Some of it was faked, I have to agree because they put mirrors on both sides to make it look like there was an infinite chain of conching machines or stuff like that. Most of it was real because we could actually see the chocolate being poured into a mould and wrapped up. We also went to the chocolate shop where we took pictures with the largest Hershey bar that felt like 5 pounds and the largest kiss that felt like 10 pounds. I don't know who would eat that much chocolate!!! They had shelves up the ceiling loaded with chocolate! I really liked Chocolate World.

Rideau Hall

We went to Rideau Hall. It was the house of the governor general. There were a lot of trees. Each of the trees was planted by someone famous like Mikhail Gorbachev, John F. Kennedy, or some other Duke of something. There were a lot of mosquitoes so we had to leave before we even saw the hall. But, in between the trees and on the paths, there were cool things like a totem pole and an Inukshuk. The totem pole was given to the people at Rideau Hall by the Kwakwaka'wakw tribe because the governor general at that time was named Chief of that tribe. The inushuk was made for the second anual Aboriginal day. An inushuk is supposed to warn people about dangers in the arctic.

Mint

We went to the Royal Canadian Mint. It was in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It was supposed to look like a castle on the outside and had a tall fence and thick gates. We didn't take pictures because pictures were not allowed. We had to wait in a white tent for our tour guide to come because they were doing construction on part of the facade. When we were waiting for our tour guide to come, we saw wooden cutouts of dollar coins (Canadian dollars mind you) with the Vancouver winter Olympic mascots Sumi and Miga. Their faces were cut out so you had to stick your own face in. When the tour guide arrived, he took us inside and the tour began. There were two mints in Canada. One in Winnipeg and one in Ottawa. This one made collector coins, investment coins, and medals. The one in Winnipeg made real circulating money. The workers first took a block of gold and put it in a machine the flattened it with 8 tons of pressure and made it into a coil. They then sent the coil to another room and and made the coil thinner. Then, they flattened it out and punched gold coins out of it. They then cleaned it in a solution and tumbled it around with beads and stuff to make it shiny. They then pressed designs on to it. For investment coins, they mechanically pressed it because they were just investment coins but for collector coins, they hand pressed it. For the investment coins, one person took a bunch of blanks, blew the dust off, and another loaded them in a machine that pressed the designs on to them. All the time, they were wearing rubber gloves so they wouldn't make fingerprints on the coins. For the collector coins, however, only one person worked the machine. He had a magnifying glass to look carefully at the coins and those which were not good had to go into a furnace and back through the process again. Those that were good, he put them one by one into a press and pressed each one eight times with 12 tons of pressure. Then, all the coins were put in boxes and shipped away. We went to the store and there was a 28 kilogram gold bar that they had chained to a table and you could try to lift it. It was so heavy! We bought two collector coins and left.