Sunday, July 5, 2009

A vacation when one is retired?

By my definition a vacation means leaving home. And that's what I'm going to do for the rest of the week. I've taken many trips to far-flung locales. This trip isn't one of those. I'm only going across the Detroit River to southwest Ontario.

I intend to visit:
* Pt. Pelee National Park, which sticks into Lake Erie and is the southernmost point in Canada. My friend and debate partner highly recommends it.

* Waterfalls around Hamilton. This city is surrounded by the Niagara Escarpment, so has perhaps 30 waterfalls around it. I have a route that includes the top 9. There is also Dundurn Castle across the street from my hotel.

* A show -- Sunday in the Park with George -- at the Shaw Festival at Niagara on the Lake. It is about the artistic life of Georges-Pierre Seurat. His most famous painting (and the inspiration for the show) is about halfway down his Wikipedia page. You can see why in the show the painter's wife is named Dot.

* A play -- Ever Your's, Oscar -- at the Stratford Festival. It's about letters from Oscar Wilde.

* The opening night concert at the Elora Festival. This is a performance of Berlioz' Requiem. In addition to the gigantic orchestra, the score calls for 4 brass ensembles spread around the hall. In all there are supposed to be 50 players in these extra ensembles. We'll see if they use all 50. Since so many extra players must be hired this piece doesn't get performed all that much, so when a performance is so close to Detroit I just have to go.

1 comment:

  1. i want to learn more about Oscar Wilde, he isn't given that much attention by literary peoples

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