Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire 2006
We spent a lovely late summer day at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire with Grandpa Clair and Grandma Cinda. It was a very nearly perfect day, though Adam might disagree because he neither won in a raffle nor was allowed to purchase a $100 dragon puppet. It was romance weekend and Paul and Clair were both given tickets for gifts for their beloveds at the pirate ship armory, meaning that Cinda and I both got sword-shaped letter openers. I had fish & chips for lunch and a bread bowl with soup for dinner, with an apple dipped in the chocolate fountain and lots of bottled water in between; the kids got smoked turkey legs, in-laws had various meatball and pulled pork sandwiches. I made no major purchases -- a $10 horn-shaped poison necklace and a little book on chivalry with reproductions of lots of paintings I like (the bookstore is in the model church at this faire).
Damian Blade, a sword swallower and contortionist. Here he is demonstrating his deep throating abilities. *g*
The Mud Show. This is supposed to be Antony and Cleopatra, though it bore little resemblance to the play as I remember it (the happy ending was kind of a giveaway) and I suspect that Romeo and Juliet later in the day was pretty similar! Nonetheless it was quite funny and the kids loved it, and despite being in the second row we managed to avoid getting splashed!
Don Juan and Miguel, whom we go to see every year because they are hilarious even when we hit a part of their show we've seen before -- this time around it was the cheesy jokes (literally, all the jokes are puns on the names of cheeses). We finally broke down and bought their DVD so we can watch them in the off-season.
The Battle of Agincourt reenacted! Well, sort of -- there were a lot of gratuitous French women with swords and no actual archers and it was finished with a gunshot, but you get the idea!
And the late afternoon joust. We went to the two o'clock and the six-thirty jousts, the former of which was preceded by an archery demonstration. The battle above was defined as a reenactment for the Queen's amusement as Leicester and Anjou vied for her hand, each represented by a knight in the arena. Because this is the Penn RenFaire, of course it ended with everyone off their horses and fighting dirty in the middle, but it was less silly than previous years and the caliber of the horsemanship seemed improved.
A lady of the court gives her hand to a Frenchman, thus breaking an Englishman's heart.
"The Bull" rides in, his horse leaping over the flames. He did a lot of the showier tricks on horseback in the joust, but the guy playing Sir Edward had to fall off his horse twice in the two jousts we saw, which I gather is something that takes enormous skill.
There are also excellent displays of skill with the longbow -- this archer was hitting targets from further than the length of a football field.
One of the armory shops is a pirate ship. This is very popular with my children despite the frustration of not being allowed to touch anything inside.
Of course it is always a pleasure to see a soldier of Gondor...
...or one of the Queen's Hounds, which are actually greyhounds rescued from tracks and various other places.
The Pennsylvania RenFaire is always good for tricks with fire at the joust -- there are cannons, explosions and the like.
At the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, one of the jugglers takes a break in the middle of a crossroads. This is pretty much the way I felt after the Bar Mitzvah.
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