Diefenbunker - Day 10

Looking down one of the blast tunnels in the bunker

Today again started off with free breakfast.

Then we visited a beach which entertained the kids for an hour.

We started digging a deep well, which slowly eroded from the water. It got bigger as we kept digging and we dug a canal from the water to our pool to refill it with water. We dug a second well and connected it to our old one.

We also went thigh-deep into water which got our shorts a bit wet. But we didn't mind because it was so hot already.

We then visited the water locks of the canal which was one of the coolest things today. The canal's water level is different heights depending on the land. Boats go through the canal and sail to the Ontario river. However you can't really sail down a water fall. That is why they built the water locks.

This section of bridge has to pivot out of the way for boats to move into the lock

The locks also work as small bridges to cross the canal

Workers use hand cranks to open the drain to lower the water level in the lock.

More cranking to open the lock doors and now the boats are a lot lower

They gather the boats that want to sail into the river into the lock and then manually close doors on one side of the canal to block most of the water flow. This creates a little pool that the boats are in with doors on both sides. They then lift up some seal on the other door and the water slowly drains out. This causes the water level in the pool to lower, eventually becoming the same height as the river. Then they open the doors and the boats can sail out.

After the water locks, we had a quick poké bowl lunch and then headed straight to the Diefen Bunker in time for our guided tour.

The Diefenbunker was built during the Cold War. They built it to hopefully protect the people inside (the prime minister and the cabinet) from a nuclear bomb explosion. Fortunately, that bomb attack never happened, but unfortunately they built that Bunker for nothing.

A model of the bunker in the bunker. We would hope that there's a model of the model of the bunker in there somewhere.

Medical area to treat you if the radiation hadn't killed you yet

The Prime Minister and cabinet would have met here to run the country from the bunker if Ottawa had been nuked

Here they gather alerts from the early warning systems. They left the maps with the results of their last simulation at the end of the cold war

The tour was very informational and like yesterday, the guide had to cover a lot of information, quickly. We crossed four floors and discovered the rooms that are hidden from view. The Bunker is a fully functioning mini city, though they never really knew how well it would have worked in practice. And the Bunker was built to survive the bombs that existed at that time, so it probably wouldn't stand a chance against newer powerful bombs anyway.

After the Bunker, we killed some time to go to the CF Rideau Mall in downtown Ottawa, which is vibrant and bustling. There was another Sukoshi Mart and Amelia made her last purchase of the trip and for a while there.

Doing this, we became increasingly hungry so we decided now was the right to time to go to Jinsei Ramen, which we'd been delaying eating there as time was not right.

The place was recommended by a friend and now we recommend it to you! It can be pretty busy at times but we were very lucky to catch it at a time of almost no one.

The kids got their usual Original Tonkatsu Ramen and the adults got chicken clam ramen and spicy Tonkatsu. We purposely didn't stuff ourselves to save room for Chimnies!

Chimnies is a Hungarian dessert made of twirled, deep-fried dough, with texture similar to a croissant-doughnut.

To eat this treat, En Chimnies is the perfect place to go! We ordered a pistachio Dubai chocolate ice cream Chimnies and a caramel ice cream Chimnies. It was so delicious but maybe next time we would get the Chimnies without the ice cream to really taste the Chimnies better.