(London, Ontario, Canada)

We decided to avoid too much planning on our full day in London. We started off by visiting the Covent Garden Market: a large covered market with (mostly) food-related stalls.  The variety was impressive and I was about to take a nice overhead picture…until I realized that I had forgotten to return the memory card from my computer to my camera.  For me, the market was the highlight of downtown London. We returned there for lunch where I relapsed and once again had some Thai food.

It was too nice a day to stay in the big city, so we elected to hit the road after lunch (with my camera fully loaded this time) and visit some nearby towns. We started in St. Thomas, home to about 37,000 people. Sadly, it has recently been hard hit by plant closures (including a Ford automobile plant) and the downtown was awash in empty storefronts. We saw quite a bit of this in London’s downtown too: hopefully, things will have turned around by the time of our next visit.

Moving east, we stopped in the small but relatively prosperous town of Aylmer. It is the home of the Ontario Police College and also serves the surrounding agricultural region. I was very surprised to find both a Dutch deli and a radio station broadcasting in Low German!  We also discovered that there is a substantial Mennonite community here.

From Aylmer, it was only a short hop to the shores of Lake Erie. We decided to dip our toes in the water at the low-profile waterfront village of Port Bruce (see photo at the top of this post).  It looked like the kind of place where people have been quietly returning for generations…but haven’t been telling anybody else about it and haven’t changed anything.  It was very peaceful for a beach village on one of the Great Lakes.

Sparta, Ontario

Driving inland once again, we passed through an area with strong Quaker roots and stopped in the historic village of Sparta.  Although the village is quite small now (only a couple of hundred people), it has had a fascinating history and was booming during the 1870s when it had a population of close to 1,500 people.

We decided to continue with the time-traveling theme and visit the New Sarum Diner for dinner.  It is just about the only business in the hamlet of New Sarum today but many years ago there was a whole lot more going on.  The diner used to be a corn-cob pipe factory (!) before becoming a White Rose gas station and diner in 1943.

The diner has been operating continuously ever since.  While a slightly more formal dining room was later added at the back, the original diner is still open for business with the original furnishings…and a substantial portion of the original menu!   I kept getting up to look at all of the historic photos and memorabilia;  one of the diner’s old menus was even on display.  One notable omission from today’s menu is “beans and wieners”.

While the seating may not have been that comfortable for 21st century tastes, it was nonetheless a very enjoyable (and well-prepared) dinner.    The original soda fountain is still in place and I just had to have some of their famous rice pudding for dessert.

We returned to London for some evening shopping and did a little bit of planning for our departure from London in the morning.   We’re heading towards another lake!