The Renaissance Fair Write-Up, Part 2

So I did eventually find some mead, and they were nice enough to give me some samples, since I was a first-timer. Now my friend Chris had told me it's all about the Egyptian Mead. But they also had classic, cherry, and raspberry, so of course, I tried all those. I got about a free half-glass out of that. But it is all about the Egyptian mead. What I wanted was those cool glazed mugs people are carrying around. I was wondering how does that work? Do they fill it all the way to the top if you buy a tankard? Can I get a really big one? I should have gotten one anyway, since I need one for the large bottles of homemade beer my dad gives me.


But mead is good. It tastes great, and it gave me a nice buzz to get through the rest of the fair, with the people telling bad riddles in the middle of the path, turtles carrying little puppets in carriages, and pickle vendors. I also got a chicken gyro and that was weird. The food was fine, but the girls serving it were throwing themselves into the fun a little too much. All I wanted a was a gyro and they started dancing and making bad jokes and handing me a fork and saying "did you see the fork in the road"? It was weird and awkward. But I got my tasty gyro.

Unfortunately, at this point, the baby started cranky because she'd missed her nap. Baby + missed nap + lots of people watching = embarrassed daddy. So I became the guy holding the sippy cup of formula in the face of the baby in the front back. Probably a lot of people returned home and talked about me that day. Classic.

Then the baby fell asleep. And I mean, she fell asleep. Her head was leaned back to drink the sippy cup, and that's how she stayed. So now everyone's staring at me and the dead weight on my chest. Her head's either lolled back into the sun, or drooped over like I was carrying a stuffed toy. To kill time, my wife and two-year-old went into some kind of "beating area"(?) where you stand on a log and beat each other with pillows. It was just a light beating. There was something called a Quatrain at the jousting field. We didn't know what that was, so we checked it out. Apparently it was people on horses failing to cut through heads of lettuce.

We figured our next stop was going to be Puke & Snot. But that's the most popular part of RenFest, so we figured we had to get seats early. The cranky baby makes that difficult. The good thing was that the show was the same time as lunch, so we were able to feed the kids while we saw the show. The show was funny, but I was only able to hear every other funny line, because I guess the sound was designed to go somewhere we weren't sitting.


The last thing we wanted to see was the joust. I know it wasn't going to be very exciting--it was going to be all nerfed with safety measures and fake acting--but my wife wanted to see it. The kids were getting pretty burned out at this point, so this was the last thing we were going to see before we went home for naps. It was about what I expected. There was a Scottish guy acting as MC, who was fun to listen to. But there was a lot of pomp and circumstance before the actual content (good thing I got a bread bowl soup and another glass of mead beforehand (btw, apparently only one per customer, dammit)). Two girls (also in tight clothing) tried to get the crowd all excited up up. I just wanted to see some people run into each other with spears and fight with swords. There was some of that, but it turned out to be more like a crappy stunt show. I think I would have had more fun at the Great Dane jousting.

And we finished off the day with changing two poopy diapers.

So, in conclusion, I enjoyed the Renaissance Fest, and I would totally go there again. But next time I'm going to try to do it with more time in the day and fewer kids. There is a LOT to see and do and eat (and boobs to look at). I didn't expect to do it all in a day, but I felt unfulfilled with what I got. When I got home, I made a list of all the stuff I wanted to see and eat next time. It would have been great to do more shopping, see more shows, eat more food (mead!), and generally have more fun for myself. I'm going to either go alone, so I don't have anyone holding me back, or taking someone who knows more about Renaissance Fair and knows the good and bad stuff.


So who's leg do you have to hump to get some mead around here?

BONUS MATERIAL:

Here's the list of things I plan to eat and see next time:

FOOD

PERFORMANCES

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