Let me begin by saying that if you ever have the chance to visit the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, you should definitely avail yourself of it. TC and I just returned from a wonderful weekend spent exploring the admittedly touristy but still charming little town and attending three plays by Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet and Love's Labours Lost.
It was a perfect weekend. The weather was ideal, and it was fun to get out of the city so that we could enjoy it. We rented a car and drove there, staying at the Noretta Motel in a small room with a tiny bathroom, but with air conditioning, so it was all good :) It was also within walking 
distance of the Festival Theatre (pictured to the right), where 2 of the plays we saw were staged. We arrived on Friday night just in time to check in, grab a bite to eat at Wendy's and then hoof it down to the theatre to see All's Well That Ends Well. It was a good production, with the provisio that they set it in Victorian times, which didn't work very well with the subject of the play.
Saturday morning we spent wandering about Stratford, popping in and out of all the little stores. Some of our favourites:
Distinctly Tea (okay, this was more my favourite than TC's).
It's a wonderful place, with over 350 different kinds of loose teas to choose from. I think I did well to come home with only four! Decaf Darjeeling black tea, Decaf Earl Grey black tea, Pai Mu Tan 
white tea and a Chocolate Mint rooibos tea - mmm, I can't wait to try them all! And the store was just so darn cute! They even had a couch in the area out front where TC, and others like him, could sit while we tea-lovers oogled the shelves of tea. Or they could go to the antique clock repair shop next door and look at the dozens of old clocks. Or the make-your-own ceramics shop one door down, where they could pick a ceramic object (mug, coaster, plate, etc.) and paint it as they please. But I digress.
Another favourite was a store called The Book Vault (no surprise there, I'm sure). They had a good selection of books, at truly remarkable prices. They sell the books at the American prices, in Canadian dollars, and then have a fair number of them on sale after that. We picked up four books there, but I can't remember now what they are, though one has to do with Henry James.
Saturday afternoon we went back to the motel and I had a delicious nap while TC read and then wandered off to do some more exploring. That evening we saw Hamlet, and I can honestly say that it was one of the best plays I have ever seen. A fabulous production - I actually cried at one point, as Ophelia in her madness was grieving her father's death. The people sitting around us were rather funny. There was one guy to our left who went "Oh, hmm" every time he recognized a saying (One of TC's mentors tells the story of asking someone who had just seen a production of Hamlet what they thought of it, and they replied "It's pretty good, except it was full of cliches."). By the end of the play he was repeating them after the actors. And then at the very end, as the dying Hamlet gave all his instructions for the care of the kingdom to Horatio and then said "all that's left is silence", the same guy said rather audibly "What'd he say?" Too funny!
On Sunday, instead of going to church we went to hear Janet Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet. It was rather amazing. What they've done is had a choir sing Thomas Tallius' "Spem in Alium" (1573). Each of the 40 voices was recorded separately and the recordings are played back through 40 speakers placed in a circle around the auditorium. You can sit in the middle of the room and listen to all of the voices together, or walk around and listen to each individual singer, hearing what they would hear. I've sung in choirs, so I didn't feel the need to walk around the edges, but sat in the midst of it, surrounded by the music on every side with the ebb and flow as the emphasis moved to different sections of the choir. The effect was very moving - I felt like I was inside the music.
Afterward, we went into Rheo Thompson Candies, a chocolate and candy store where they make everything right on the premises. I cannot sufficiently describe the aromas that were wafting about the place 
- suffice it to say that we did not come out empty-handed :) The only problem was that I couldn't buy the chocolate I wanted to because it would have had to sit in the car while we went to the last play that afternoon. I contented myself with a little bit of chocolate that I could eat after lunch, and some cinnamon hard candies. TC decided to risk it and bought a bar of their gourment milk chocolate. It sat in the trunk and by the end of the day had become chocolate soup. It was still quite tasty once it had re-solidified, though!
The last play we saw was very funny - I enjoyed it tremendously.
We saw it at a much smaller venue, the Tom Patterson Theatre, making it easier for the audience to connect with what was happening on stage. Which was a good thing, since Love's Labours Lost is known for being one of Shakespeare's most linguistically complex plays. But it didn't matter that much when you could clearly see the expressions on the actors' faces. I'm glad we weren't in the front row, though - one of the actors was quite the spitter!
The food on our trip wasn't all that memorable, except for an amazing soup and sandwich that I had for lunch on Sunday. It was a Curry Cauliflower & Carrot soup, and the sandwich was a grilled cheese made with thick slices of olive & oregano bread and havarti cheese. Soup and sandwich heaven, people!
This post is growing unacceptably long, so I'd better end it :) Let me say again, though, that if you ever get the chance to head to Stratford for the Shakespeare Festival, do it! You won't regret it.
