Rin's adventure in Stratford

Morning every one!! I know it's not morning, but it saves me the time to think about what greeting to use. In any case, as mentioned on my previous entry, I went off into my own little adventure on Thursday morning to Stratford.


Let's begin by answering, why Stratford? For those who have never heard of the place, it's a town in Ontario roughly a bit over two hours away on train from Toronto. The place is also known as Shakespeare Town, inspired in the original located in England. So, five years ago, Colton and I met at an Anime convention (Anime North)... well more than really meeting, we just had a picture together. Few days later, I meet his friend on facebook who decides to tag him and etc etc... Now we are friends! Normally, Colton would come to Toronto to visit, but I had said before that I wanted to visit Stratford sometime. So for our fifth year anniversary I suppose (that'll be my excuse) I decided to finally go.

VIA railway @ Union Station

I left the house around 9:00 a.m. on June 21st to get to the VIA train station in downtown Toronto for departure at 10:55 a.m.  It takes a bit over an hour to get to Union Station, which is where the VIA rails are located, so I made it in time to purchase my tickets and wait for the train for a few minutes. I arrived at Stratford around 1:20 p.m. and walked out to look for Colton who was picking me up. Suddenly I head a voice behind me saying, "looking for someone?"; I turn around and there he was! From the station to his house is a 5-10 minute walk, as Colton would say, you can walk to town in half an hour. We got to his house and I greeted his dad, who is a really nice person.

Stratford City Hall

It was raining Thursday afternoon, so we decided to stay in while Colton's dad actually went out to the race tracks (he even went golfing the next day... what a nice life).On the other hand, we watched "Police Academy 1" (very funny movie! watch it!) and played a game of League of Legends. Also watched some more shows and we had shrimp pasta for dinner, which Colton made. My first impression walking into his room was "I don't feel so bad about my messy room anymore", and as I saw the wall that had a few anime posters and drawings, I noticed a set of sticker pictures on the wall. I thought that was cute and later on when I got close enough to look at them, I realized it was the one we took together two years ago! (so sweet~). We went to bed fairly early that night, since he couldn't find a party on Final Fantasy to get to level 50 and I was already passed out.

Downtown Stratford

On Friday, I wanted to go walk around, so a few hours after our strawberry pie and ice cream breakfast, we went "downtown". Those who live in Toronto know how busy and crowded downtown can get. But in Stratford, downtown is... small enough to walk through the whole thing in 20 - 30 minutes! Downtown is actually around four streets from Colton's house... does that mean uptown is around four streets the opposite direction? In any case, we had lunch at Bentley's and took a walk along the river. We rested a bit on the island they had on the river and then headed back home. To finish the day, we watched "Police Academy 2" and shortly after it was time for me to return home. Colton went with me to the station and the train departed Stratford at 8:55 p.m. and I got back home around 1:00 a.m.


All in all, it was simple and fun. I'll probably go back another time specially because I forgot my glasses and my umbrella at Colton's place. I wrote this blog the night I got home, but didn't get time to publish it until now! Sorry! So that's all for now~ Thanks for reading and have a good day!

- Rin

June 24th, 2012