Leaving the stars and stripes, we returned to the maple leaf on the 22nd. The following day we drove the short stretch from Sarnia to London to stay with our friends Donna and Andy and celebrate their birthdays; in Andy's case, the Big 50. That turned out to be some evening, with lots of new people to meet, Hungarian cabbage rolls to eat, lots to drink and a suitably grand performance of The Horrible "I will never do this again in my life" Hangover in the morning (the latter for just one of us, thank god).
Having recovered enough, we all had a great time at Donna's brother's summer place in Port Stanley, a most charming town by Lake Erie. Joining us were members of their families plus D&A's musician son Dan and his colleague Allison, whose latest solo CD we now have, with autograph :) Do check out www.allisonbrown.ca if you're at all interested in North American acoustic roots music!
Monday was Town Day for us. We strolled around central London (which, it must be mentioned, has a River Thames, a Hyde Park and a Victoria Park, and no doubt a few other namesakes of its older sibling...). Reko found the so far last of his must-have Marvel books, Annu got some new running gear and everyone was surprised when we realized we had been walking for four hours straight.
After days of enjoying our friends' hospitality in their home, we moved our camp to their trailer near the town of Goderich, so it's just us four here at the moment; Donna and Andy will join us tomorrow for the long weekend in Ontario. On the way here we stopped at the stunningly pretty town of St Mary and the bigger but also very picturesque Stratford, home of the annual Shakespeare Festival (as well as Justin Bieber, a fact our boys would rather forget).
Yesterday was another excursion day, this time to the towns of Grand Bend and Bayfield. We had briefly visited both on the previous trip but now we could spend some time in both. Grand Bend is a summertime micro-California, apparently based on beach visitors and related commerce. Fun, sunshine + ice cream were not the only things we got there: one of the boys now has an earring and one of the adults now has a double piercing in one ear... Bayfield, a little way north of Grand Bend, is a different kind of summer town: serene, handicrafts-friendly, thoroughly nice and comes with a great hippie-ish this and that store. Plus there's an extra nice bookstore (The Village Bookstore, what else!) where we found some more literary baggage to take on the airplane. The fine day concluded with a Lake Huron swim (boys) and a very nice home made dinner. It rained heavily during the night (after all the heat it came in necessary) so now we have to figure out if it's mud wrestling or campground swimming today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment