Wednesday July 14th Wake. Drive to Scarborough to visit the Grandparents. Listen to The Art Of Racing In the Rain as we drive. Lunch with the Grandparents, then on to Stratford. Arrive at Buckingham House. This is a great house with a great host. Walk to Pearl Japanese Sushi. Delicious. See Evita at The Avon. Very well done. I don't usually like musicals. A dynamic performance.

Thursday July 15th An easy morning. A little shopping then on to an open house at St. James Church. Met a great lady with lots of historical insight. Talked more about buying a house. Decided to do it. Lunch at the York Street Kitchen. Read some Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. Dinner at Simple Fish and Chips. Were almost caught in the rain. Saw The Winter's Tale at The Tom Patterson Theatre. Very impressive, especially the costume design.

Friday July 16th Amazing breakfast as always. Another easy day. Almost bought some furniture. Had a late lunch (with Guinness) at Molly Blooms Irish Pub. Read some more Zen. This evening saw The Tempest with Christopher Plumber at The Festival Theatre. Great show. Strong Performance (especially by Christopher Plumber) and vibrant colours in set and costume design. Very different take on Miranda, played more like a Wench, not sure I liked that, but is probably realistic.

Saturday July 17th Spent the morning by the lake. Saw Christopher Plumber getting some exercise. Decided to leave him unassailed. Fabulous lunch at the Annex Room. Great storm clouds. Dinner at Pan Tapas and Grill (very small portions). Saw a humorous exchange between some large americans and the staff. This evening at The Festival Theatre, saw As You Like It. My favourite of the season. One of my favourites of all time. Set designer Debra Hanson and artistic director Des McAnuff staged it in the world of the 1920s with a surrealist bent, which I absolutely loved. Duke Frederick was very dark, sort of a cross between Hitler and Mussolini. All strong performances except for Jacques who seemed to stumble over a few lines (which I've never seen at Stratford before), but I otherwise loved his character so much it didn't matter. Also, the guy who played Adam (a veteran of Stratford Theatre) was as always, superb.

Sunday July 18th Our last breakfast, then off to Toronto to brunch with Riz & Sabrina. Then and easy, but long ride home, with more of The Art Of Racing In The Rain.

Wednesday July 1st Wake exhausted. Pack. Drive to Stratford with stops at Tim Hortons, Fuel, Swiss Chalet, Fuel. Listen to "Starfish and the Spider" as we drive. Arrive at Buckingham House. This is a great B&B with a great host. Nap. Take-out dinner from Raja, then see Bartholomew Fair at the Tom Patterson Theatre. Walk home and have cookie and water. Sleep.

Thursday July 2nd Wake. Shower. 8:30 breakfast. 9:15 tour backstage. Drive to Waterloo and have a long lunch with Steffen Roller. Choose gifts for Mike & Caroline at Household China. Drop off gifts at Caroline's house. Back to Stratford and nap. Dinner at Annex (which is excellent). 8pm Cyrano de Bergerac at the Festival Theatre (which is excellent). Home and to bed.

Friday July 3rd Wake. Shave. 8:30 breakfast (alone) then read while Amanda has a bath. Walk to town. It's cold and drizzly. Buy comics. Go dress shopping. Have a small fight. Lunch at Cafe 10 with a bottle of Stella. Pay Amanda's parking ticket. 2pm The Importance Of Being Earnest at the Avon Theatre. (what is excellent). Amanda is having a really great time. Then over to Let Them Eat Cake which is delicious but too much cake. Get a bottle of wine but Amanda doesn't feel well, so she naps for a couple of hours while I read Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (which is awful). She wakes up and we pickup some chips and salsa. I get drunk and we play Scrabble all night.

Saturday July 4th Wake. Nice breakfast with four others. Go walking and shopping. Go to Art In The Park and buy Tumbly Tumblers. Lunch at The Country Food Company. They have great sandwiches. Ice cream from the chocolate place and on to Julius Ceasar at the Avon Theatre (which is excellent). Back home for nap / fight. Dinner at Pearl Sushi (which is really really good). Then drinks at Down the Street. Walk home late and drunk. Sleep

Sunday July 5th Wake. Breakfast. Slow start. Checkout by 11am. Walk around the lake. Lovely day. Drive to Schmidt's wedding. Have a blast. Amanda has to leave early to fly to Arizona. I stay late. Drive to Barrow's and sleep.

Thursday August 21st Drove through Toronto to pick up our new painting from Brad Eyre. Got to Stratford and checked into Duncan Hall B&B. This is the first year that we're staying in on spot. Lunch at the York St. Kitchen. Delicious as always. Saw The Taming Of The Shrew at The Festival Theatre. Very interesting take on Katherine and Petruchio which I think successfully steered their relationship away from outright abuse. Caught a late bite to eat at Cafe 10 and had some drinks at Down The Street.

Friday August 22nd Hilarious breakfast. Cereal with rice milk. We won't be returning to Duncan Hall B&B. Did some shopping and had lunch at Veg Out (which are the new tenants of the green restaurant on Erie St.). It used to be an amazing noodle place, but it's still good. Saw Moby Dick at the Studio Theatre. It was basically interpretive dance, no dialogue. Amanda liked it, but I very much didn't. I don't recall the no-dialogue detail being advertised in its online description. I'll have to be more careful about Studio productions in the future. Dinner at Bently's.

Saturday August 23rd Spent the morning at the Farmer's Market. Saw Romeo & Juliet at The Festival Theatre. It opened and closed in modern dress, but the bulk of it was in period costume. I really like Shakespeare in modern settings. Drove to Bobcageon for the night, then home the next day.

Friday June 8th This is our first year driving from Ottawa. It's a long way. We finally arrived at The Lilly Pad B&B. It's a beautiful house, but I prefer a less talkative host. We saw Othello in the Tom Patterson Theatre this evening. I wasn't fond of it. Iago was superb, but I didn't like Othello's delivery. Professional Shakespeare should be easy to understand, but Othello's dialogue kept blurring to noise for me.

Saturday June 9th I'm still on a bent to see every B&B in town, so we move after breakfast today. Embarrassingly our second destination happens to have an adjacent back yard to the Lilly Pad. Both hosts dragged it out of me. Acrylic Dreams B&B isn't bad, but both the house and host just aren't my style. Saw To Kill A Mockingbird at the Avon. Stunning performance. This was my first time in the Avon and it's a standard flat stage, which is not my preference. I think the Avon performance cater to a more Niagara-On-The-Lake crowd, and I'll probably avoid it.

Sunday June 10th Saw King Lear this afternoon. It was very long. Then we drove straight to Ottawa, which was even longer. Arrived so burned out that I can barely remember the performance. We won't be stacking a show and a long drive like this again.

Friday August 25th This is our first year driving to Stratford. Checked in to Erie Street B&B. Good house and host, but I'm not super-keen on the location. Dinner at the green noodle house (I forget the name) on Erie St. This is becoming a ritual for us. This evening we see The Liar at The Studio Theatre. It's an ancient French Comedy. The randomly assign parts at the beginning of the show and hold scripts throughout. But you can tell, they've simply tried (and failed) to learn all the parts. It wasn't bad, but I don't think they gained anything by their experimentation. I would avoid stuff like this in the future.

Saturday August 26th Today, it's King Henry IV, Part1 a The Tom Patterson Theatre. History plays are sort of boring, but I had a good time. Today we move to SwanAvon B&B (because I want to try all B&Bs in Stratford). Great location, beautiful house and quirky host. An excellent combination.

Sunday August 27th White chocolate scones and omelet for breakfast. I love this place. This afternoon we saw The Blond, The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead at The Studio Theatre. It's a one-woman show performed by Lucy Peacock. A Masterpiece.

Wednesday September 20th This is our first trip to Stratford together. I'm just finished my Masters and about to start work with Entrust in October. I have no money and Amanda is taking me as a treat. We're going by train from Kingston, and I thought we might camp. It seems that their fall-fair grounds can be rented for tents at $10/night. But Amanda prevailed that we (she) can afford a B&B. Unfortunately, they're all booked up, but we managed to get one night at The Bard and Breakfast B&B and the next two nights at The Maples Of Stratford B&B. So, our odyssey begins at the Kingston Train Station, where our train is delayed because someone (way down the track) has committed suicide by jumping in front of a train. Consequent.y trains are canceled today and we're all piled onto a bus. But that causes us to miss our connection in Toronto. Thankfully, VIA is a responsible company and sends us to Stratford by Taxi. Checkin wasn't until 5pm, so we hung out, mostly by the lake, with our gear, looking like vagrants. This evening we saw The Lark at The Festival Theatre with Amanda Plumber. It was a very dark and very moving performance. We both loved it. We'd each been to Stratford on school trips before, but this was our first time together. I think we're hooked.

Thursday September 21st We have to checkout after breakfast, and have no where to store our gear until evening. And it's cold. This isn't ideal, but I love The Maples Of Stratford B&B. Amanda will hate this, but I'm going to want to stay at multiple different B&Bs again next year. We have lunch at an awesome green noodle house on Erie St. And make mugs at a paint-your-own-clay place on York St. Mine (for amanda) doesn't turn out so well, but Amanda's (for me) is a masterpiece. This evening we see The Tempest at the Festival Theatre. Unfortunately we run into one of Amanda's old English teachers. Luckily we no longer look like vagrants.

Friday September 22nd It's nice to not have to move B&Bs today. We have a great time but get caught in the rain. The Maples is pretty far from the action. This evening we see As You Like It at The Festival Theatre. It's done in a summer of love theme, and I love it. Amanda thought they hammed it up a bit at the end because there were a lot of high school students in the audience (cater to the crowd), but I didn't mind. Maybe next year we won't go in September.

Saturday September 23rd Our train is super early, so we have to get up and depart before breakfast. It's a long way home, but I've had a great time and hope we come back every year. After arriving in Kingston, because I am ridiculous, I make us walk back home from the Train Station. In my defence it was a nice day, and we didn't have any pressing engagements.