Hello! My wife and I are currently living in Spain but are going to have a kid soon and looking to move back closer to my family in Ottawa. Ideally we would like to live some place walkable and are looking for some advice on neighbourhoods in Ottawa to explore. My family is in Carlington near Carling & Merivale and I’m not a huge fan on that area, Carling isn’t that pleasnt to walk around and the closest grocery store is Food Basics which isn’t that far away but involves walking around Carling and the 417 exit to get to.

I got some mixed advice about lower town and center town. I’ve heard that they are generally walkable but can be sketchy. Is this true in general? For example is lower town sketchy all over or just around Rideau? Like if we found a place south of Laurier would it be sketchy over there?

Are there other neighborhoods you’d recommend in the city that are walkable? I think the big things for me would be, being able to walk to a grocery store that you can get most of what you need, a pharmacy, and having decent access to transit. We’ll have a car but I really don’t enjoy driving and would like to avoid having to drive on daily basis.