I landed in the Ottawa CIC office yesterday! What a relief.
Here's a little info, in case anyone else is landing in Ottawa, I know I was curious.
You walk in and a guard looks at your appointment papers, so bring those. He then takes you in a room with about 50 chairs, a bathroom, and a water fountain. He puts your letter in a stack with the others that are already waiting. It is first come, first served. It seemed like everyone had the same 1:30 appointment time, and we showed up at 1:15. We waited for 2 hours to get called to a window, (there were 2 officers working the 3 windows). It took about 5 minutes to do the paperwork, and the questions were: Have you ever been charged/convicted of a crime, have you ever been denied entry to Canada, do you have any other dependents that are not listed in your application?. Then we signed stuff and were done.
My suggestions:
-Arrive earlier as you can, it was first come first served, and there were a lot of people before us -- seems they were smarter than me and arrived very early.
-If you bring kids, bring lots of distractions and snacks!
-Print your appointment papers!
-The parking lot was totally full at the location, there is a $7 all day lot 2 blocks down on Catherine street that had lots of open spots, the street parking is only 2 hours, and you might be there longer -- it's worth the $7 to not leave the room when you're waiting to go pay the meter.
Thank you to everyone who gives updates and advice. This forum has been very helpful.
Good luck to everyone! I will post when I get my card, which they said could take up to 6 weeks to receive.
