Katie Shapiro

Canada’s capital is a culinary charmer. Enough alliteration? You can never have enough alliteration, truth be told, and you can never have enough of the excellent food served at the best restaurants in Ottawa. Poutine and BeaverTails might be the first things that jump to mind when you think of Ottawa food, but that just proves how much culinary exploring there is to do.Ottawa is a hugely underrated city, packed with fun things to do and serenity usually missing from capital cities. Québec is just across the river, and the influence is palpable. Delicious, too, if we didn’t mention that already. Ottawa’s food scene is flourishing.

A capital city with a small town feel, it’s hard to believe that Ottawa was ever known as “the city that fun forgot.” Beyond its bureaucratic facade, this government town is home to myriad festivals, a growing restaurant scene, beautiful green spaces, comfortable hotels and interesting indie shops. As Canada’s capital, Ottawa also offers plenty of world-class cultural attractions and unique museums. Some seasonal attractions—like skating along the Rideau Canal in the winter time or admiring the thousands of blooming bulbs during the spring’s Tulip Festival—are hard to miss (and you shouldn’t!). But no matter the season or the weather (and there are some extremes here), the city is anything but boring, as proven by this list of awesome things to do in Ottawa. Done something on this list and loved it? Share it with the hashtag #TimeOutDoList and tag @TimeOutEverywhere. Find out more about how Time Out selects the very best things to do all over the world.