Paul and Kathy bid us adieu (a nod to the Shakespearean festival) in the morning. The private suite downstairs has offered all the amenities we could have wished for. The conversation has been soul satisfying and food great. And not only that, the weather has been so warm and sunny. Because we had had so much fun at the Stratford Festival yesterday we decide to take in another show before heading to Gerhard and Hilda’s in Kitchener Waterloo.

Rudy drops me off on the walkway between two of the festival theatres to enjoy a walk while he heads off to try to locate some cables that would help him with the GPS system in the van. I walk around the park, up one side of the river and then cross over a footbridge and down the other side. What makes a great walk? Exercise and good scenery of course. But there is an added benefit: stories in the form of plaques on the park benches. It must be human nature to try to find connections and tell stories, even if small and abbreviated. With these plaques I only get little snippets and have to fill in the details with my imagination. So here are the tidbits I found on the plaques and I will let you fill in the blanks and finish the stories and conjure up the people you imagine, connected to these.

The satisfaction of finding a story and following it does not continue on to the show we see at the Festival Theatre. It is Rent, an iconic and renowned show set in Manhattan’s East Side. It follows the lives of impoverished young artists trying to make a go under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. It is a look at the Bohemian lifestyle. Anyway, the long and short of it was that neither Rudy or I can “find the story”. There are multiple characters and multiple storylines and despite the wild dancing and singing, fantastic stage with multiple levels, the cool lighting and more, we look at each other at intermission and both decide that we have seen the whole show. We leave.

We head on to Gerhard and Hilda’s for supper. Adam, Nicole and baby Gwendolyn join us and we sit under the Pries Pavilion (a large covered area complete with outside kitchen [bbq, pizza oven, smoker, etc.] built by G and H a couple of years ago) eating delicious homemade pizza and catching up. After which we climb the couple of flights of stairs to the attic bedroom and fall asleep.