Ye olde day

Months and months ago, we went back up to DC for Joanne’s birthday.  And one of the many things we did was go to the Renaissance festival.  It was much like the other festival that I’ve been to.  Many people were dressed in medieval or fantasy costumes.  

And there was even that one strange guy that we would all be afraid of if we’d seen them on the street.  But since he was at the festival, all people wanted to do was take a photo with him.  I found him a little frightening.

There was, of course, the jousting ring.  I can never pass up on a good joust.

I just wish the actors and actresses weren’t so horrible at delivering their lines.  It’s like listening to fingernails screech down a chalkboard. And I wish that they wouldn’t affect the British accent.  They are so bad that It should just be illegal.  But at least the joust was exciting.  Splintering wood flying all over the place.  None of them fell off their horses though.

Unfortunately, it was really really dusty.  You could really tell when people shuffled their feet.  A cloud of dust followed them much like a cloud of dirt followed Charlie Brown’s Linus character.  We returned to the homestead covered in a huge layer of dust.  I lathered up twice to make sure that I was clean.  

We also had gone during the Scottish weekend.  I had expected some Scottish dancing, some haggis, maybe some blood pudding of some sort, but this is what I got.

Yeah, you see that right.  They stuck Scottish in front of everything.  And I have no doubt that during pirate weekend, Scottish beef jerky would become pirate beef jerky.  There were, however, five people in kilts including JJ.

The food was not as good as I would have liked.  It didn’t look like there was a facility for making the food in any of these stalls.  They looked like they were made ahead of time and kept on a warmer.  So everything tasted stale to me.  

Skip that egg, it was a Scottish scotch egg, which was nothing more than the a boiled egg wrapped in sausage and fried.  And you can imagine stale fried sausages is not that yummy.  I covered it in Tabasco and then it was just decent.

The vendors weren’t that impressive.  I felt like I’ve seen them in several other places, the same jewelry, the same swords, the same costumes.  Vendors buy the same stock from the same suppliers.  One thing that was unique was this puppeteer.  I have since lost his card, but he was definitely unique.

I don’t know if I’ve just become jaded or I remembered Renaissance festivals with a bit of that nostalgia that makes everything 50 times better than it was, but I was a little disappointed by this one. I’m not sure what it was, but I don’t know if I’d go back to that one.  I think I still have dust in my nose lo these many months later.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal