OTTAWA TULIP FESTIVAL
DATES, PACKAGES AND SPECIAL EVENTS
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Dates for this year's Canadian Tulip Festival are May 2 to 19. More than three million tulips decorate the Ottawa and Gatineau regions during the largest tulip festival in the world.
Admission is free to parks, which showcase colourful tulip beds. You'll find tulips at Parliament Hill, 300,000 tulips at Commissioners Park, at Dows Lake, and 75,000 tulips at Major's Hill Park (located between Parliament Hill and the ByWard Market neighbourhood).
Tulip Festival packages
Thirty-eight Ottawa and Gatineau area hotels offer affordable Tulip Celebration packages with two nights' hotel accommodations for two adults. Packages also include two passports for food samples from countries at the Tulip Festival's International Pavilion, Tulip Festival souvenir pins and admission to one of the following: National Gallery of Canada, the permanent collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum.
Each Tulip Festival Package has a Rideau Centre savings directory voucher for shopping downtown and a Casino du Lac-Leamy $20 cash certificate. An optional add-on dinner-for-two at the five-diamond Le Cordon Bleu Signatures Restaurant is valued at $150.
Special tulip festival events
Celebridée features bilingual presentations on the power of ideas. This year, author Salman Rushdie engages audiences, as well as comedians Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood. Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, discusses penal reform.
International Pavilion highlights the cultures, music and foods of 25 countries, which have embassies and high commissions based in Ottawa. The colourful tent is located at Major's Hill Park. Admission to the International Pavilion is free during the 18-day tulip festival.
Ottawa tulip festival history
Princess Juliana of the Netherlands gave 100,000 tulip bulbs to Canadians in the fall of 1945, after World War II ended. The tulips were a thank you to Canadian troops for liberating Holland from Nazi occupation and to Ottawa citizens for welcoming the Dutch Royal Family, who took refuge in Ottawa during the war. Princess Margriet, the younger sister of Queen Beatrix, was born in Ottawa.
The gift of tulips from Dutch royalty and the Dutch Bulb Growers Association continues every year.
Visitors can follow a 15-kilometre Tulip Route through Ottawa and Gatineau to see tulip blossoms and the Magic Tulip Tent, which contains brocade and mirrors.
To buy Tulip Festival Packages, call toll-free 800-363-4465 or visit Ottawa Tourism's website.
Ottawa Tourism www.ottawatourism.ca
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