Travelsmartplanet

The swooping architecture of the building and jaw-dropping 17 metre-high domed ceiling of Canada Hall are visions you will not easily forget after you have visited the newly named Canadian Museum of History (was Canadian Museum of Civilization), which covers Canadian life from AD 1000 to 2000.

From now until Sept 28, 2014,  you can enjoy the informative exhibit about Snow and the ingenious ways in which  Canadians have adapted to difficult winter conditions, from sleighs to snow removal. You can participate in a fun quiz at the end.

The museum is a playground for all, as the Children’s Museum takes the kids on travels around the world – including a passport to stamp in each country. All kinds of imaginative play from driving a bus, motorcycle, ship or camel to running a shop, putting on a puppet show, living in a pyramid, moving heavy boxes using a winch, or booking a trip can all be tried out.

In the main galleries, visitors see a Viking family arriving in Newfoundland around AD 1000,  discover New France through a farmhouse, inn, hospital, shoemaker’s shop and visit a voyageur camp, a lumber camp, a Métis campsite, British military living quarters and a Maritime shipyard. There’s a stroll past shops  along the main street of a small town in late 19th-century Ontario.

Learn about life in a turn-of-the-century prairie railway station and yard, a Saskatchewan grain elevator, an authentic Ukrainian church, a Chinese hand laundry and a 1920s Alberta oil derrick. You can even sit in Yellowknife’s Wildcat Cafe, the town’s first restaurant and a popular gathering spot for prospectors, bush pilots, miners and trappers.

If you love animals, leave time for the up close and personal movie, Kenya 3-D about a safari through Africa.

Location: 100 Laurier St., Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M8
Phone: 819-776-7000 or 800-555-5621
www.civilization.ca

You have to admire their moxie. Contortionists are being placed inside suitcases which are then placed inside the cargo hold of buses in Spain. They then have the opportunity to go through any and all of your luggage and help themselves to whatever they want, while you are enjoying the scenic rides between popular tourist destinations. By the time you have reached the end of your journey, they (and their booty) are back inside their suitcase, ready to be plucked off the bus by an accomplice.

Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was born in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires. You see the church where he worshipped and where he felt a calling to devote his life to God.

Twice on Saturdays and Sundays, a 3-hour FREE government-sponsored Papal Circuit bus tour takes you past 24 landmarks of his life: the tree-shaded street of his middle class childhood home (531 Membrillar, where his parents, Regina Maria Sivori and Mario Bergoglio raised their 5 children), the plaza where he played soccer, his school, his barber (where he also received pedicures!), his favorite newsstand, and the Metropolitan Cathedral which he presided over as an archbishop.