Renaissance Faire

We are not organized people. We are three Pisceans in one home...in other words, we generally swim by the seats of our pants. We will see a billboard or advertisement for some event and say to each other that we really should go to that...before we know it, three months have passed, we drive by the same billboard and realize that we missed the event entirely. This is simply our way. Unless some more organized person enters our world, makes plans and is good enough to ask us to join in those plans. Then, we're there. It gets marked on the calendar, even if that calendar is only in my head, and we show up come hell or high water.

This is how we managed to attend the Renaissance Faire on Sunday. Our friends D & D invited us to go with them along with D's sister R and her new boyfriend W. I teased D & D that they only love us for our stroller, because, let's be honest, this is one of the major perks of having a kid--the ability to load every last scrap of your belongings into the bottom basket of the stroller so you can walk around with your hands relatively free without looking like an overloaded pack mule. Not that I minded one bit, I was just happy to be out of the house and among adult conversation like a big person.



So out our little group of seven plus stroller went into the teeming throngs of seed pearls, plaited hair and chain mail interspersed with the modern-day folk milling about. One of the stand workers we talked to was a girl in a beautiful velvet and leather dress with hand sewn beading at the neck. Hubby asked her how much she paid for it and we all picked ourselves off the ground when she confided that she'd spent close to $700 on it--the entire season's worth of her pay. If this was indicative in any way of the cost of the real Renaissance, I no longer have any questions about why there were beggars during the era, except for why there weren't more of them.



We watched the parade that signaled the official start of the day, and showcased the many different types of costumes we would be witnessing throughout our wanderings. We watched a show or two, the favorite of the men being the belly-dancer-singer, not that she was in any way the only naked navel of the day. There was quite a bit of eye-candy for the men as many of the bustiers provided eye-popping cleavage and some of the chain-mail wearing women wore their metal bras without anything underneath them. Hey, there was plenty of eye-candy for the women as well with muscled men in loin-cloths and plenty of tights. But we women had the good sense not to take pictures that could result in our sleeping on the couch.




We got a couple of pictures with the executioner whereby hubby got down on his knees and got his neck axed by me for a photo op. I'd post it here, but well, I was amazed to see in full color exactly how huge I am. Wal-mart mirrors are one thing--fleeting shocks, but to have it for advanced review in a picture... OMG! It's bad enough that I have to see it, I won't subject your eyes to permanent damage. However, I've decided that I need to wire my jaw shut. Speaking of my jaw, I put all manner of greasy fare into it and we all spent far too much money on food and drinks (it should be illegal to charge $2.50 for a 20 oz soda and an extra $1 for a cup of ice!)

Hubby re-proposed in one of the chapels they had, and we all took pictures there. Some of which I don't have yet, because there were three cameras in action that day. I'm sure we walked at least 5 miles from car exit to car re-entry. We were there for 8 hours and all of us wound up slightly sunburned.

Before I close my commentary, I must Must MUST comment on the bathrooms. WOW, they were fantastic. Really clean! Every single bathroom was clean AND there were plenty of them about, you didn't have to hunt for them. Seriously, the sinks and the stalls and the changing table were all clean enough to not warrant any misgivings about using any of them--which is something I do almost everywhere... Another shocker--No Line for the ladies room... Ladies you know what I'm talking about; the bathroom sitch was tantamount to saying you went to the moon for lunch. And from one of our friends, I was told the men's room was just as clean and accessible. That in itself is worth the price of admission.

It was a really good day with lots to see and buy and gawk at. And really good company to share it with. So a huge thanks to D & D for being organized enough to make the day happen!

The next yard of strawberry daiquiri is on us!