A wonderful trip to Canada...

My wife and I went to The Stratford Festival Theater on Tuesday for a matinee performance of Camelot and then spent the night in Woodstock. What a nice day. Stratford is a delightful little town about 20-30 minutes northeast of London, Ontario. The Stratford Festival is an annual series of plays – featuring the plays of Shakespeare and other plays. There are three theaters in Stratford, with varied play bills. The Stratford Festival repertory company is purportedly the largest permanent repertory company in the world.


The Festival Theater that we went to is set is a beautiful park and we resolved to bring a picnic lunch the next time that we come. It is an easy 4 hour drive from Milford, with only a few construction detours, mostly in Canada. We didn’t have time on this trip to spend time downtown in Stratford, but a quick drive-thru showed us that there appear to be lots of cute shops and restaurants, so that’s another thing on the to-do list for next time.

I can certainly recommend this as a great day trip. The season is almost over for this year, but next year we plan to go back to see several plays. There were bus-loads of seniors at the matinee, I suspect for the same reason as we chose it – it’s easier to stay awake for a matinee performance than for one at night. I also wanted to have daylight to drive to Woodstock in, since we were going cross country on back roads to get there. I’d have gotten lost for sure if it was dark.

One frustration for me was the consequence of me buying a cheap GPS years ago. The GPS that I have doesn’t work in Canada or at least I couldn’t figure it out. Apparently I only bought the maps for the U.S. Live and learn. I could have used my smart phone GPS, but the roaming charges in data mode add up quickly, so I had printed off a bunch of Google maps at home and used them. They worked fine.

The only complaint that I have about the Canadian experience is that I think I got ripped off at a gas station – the attendant charged me 10% to do the money exchange of my $20 US, turning it into $18 Canadian. The rate that we hit elsewhere was very close to a 1 to 1 ratio. I guess there those types of crooks in every country.