Although the now-traditional Memorial Day Sew-In (#MDSI) was alive and well this weekend, I was unable to participate because I was off doing other things. DH and I have been ships passing in the night the last several weeks due to both of our travel schedules and evening work engagements and such, so we took a slightly-spur-of-the-moment trip up to Stratford, Ontario, for the Shakespeare Festival. My husband did the math for how long our relationship with Stratford was...math that can only make one feel very old. Stratford was our first big consistent weekend trip when we were first together. We were laughing this past weekend about how in some ways, we "grew up" at Stratford. We attended plays there almost every year for the first 12-15 years of our marriage before we switched to going to Niagara on the Lake (also in Ontario) more frequently. Now that our kids are (sort of) launched, we've decided to start a new tradition of going to Stratford in the spring/early summer and staying with NOTL for our anniversary weekend in the fall. Nice bookends to the season.
We left Friday afternoon--after a rather tempestuous morning involving having to put in an emergency call to the plumber. Ahem.
Fortunately, what looked at first like it would be hugely expensive and quite possibly require ripping out a lot of the tiling in our upstairs bathroom turned out to be a simple and inexpensive fix.
At least, plumbing-wise. The ceiling may be another matter. (No tiling was harmed in the making of this photo.) But we'd planned on getting some painting done anyway, so this probably just pushed the matter up a bit on our timetable. In any case, we were able to leave on vacation only about 90 minutes later than we'd planned; we still made our dinner reservations in Stratford Friday night.
Also despite a very rainy Friday, the rest of our weekend was absolutely perfect weather-wise. Mid-to-high 70s, brilliant sun, gorgeous. We went paddleboating on the Avon River (yes, it's really called that in Ontario, too) Saturday morning, saw "Crazy for You" Saturday afternoon, and "King Lear" Saturday night. Long day, but really nice. Both performances were phenomenal, although I have to admit that "Crazy for You" was a bit more fun. "King Lear" is, of course, just all-out depressing (spoiler alert: just about everyone dies), but it was very well performed and included Colm Feore in the lead.
There are no shows on Sunday so we were able to just "chillax," do more walking in the sun, have leisurely meals, and even spend a couple of hours in our little coach-house studio suite at the B&B reading. Perfect vacation. We zoomed home on Monday to make it in time for a ballgame with DH's family--we have a minor league team here in my hometown. Again, perfect weather.
The results of the weekend are (1) a more relaxed spirit, (2) a renewed memory of how much we love plays at Stratford, (3) fun times with family, and (4) a little bit of a sun tan to start the season.
Here's the photo gallery:
