Renaissance Festival 2008

The Minnesota Renaissance Festival was this weekend, and I had never been before, but had always been interested in going, so a man I work with, who is one of the performers at the festival, gave me 4 tickets, and Megan, Jacqui, Joe and I took ourselves out to Shakopee, MN for the afternoon to enjoy .... something we were not sure about.

This was the entrance to the festival - Like a mini-Disneyland, in Medieval times

This man was a sword fighter - he greeted us as we entered into Make Believe Land. We had taken two pictures before this one, and then he decided he needed to make a better face, so I did too. I am pleased with the results.

Jim is in the center. He provided us with the tickets to Make Believe Land. We had a great time and were lucky to find him. His job is basically to escort people all around the festival, so he is never in one place for very long!These very large puppets also greeted us as we walked into the festival.

Perhaps one of my very favorite things to see at the festival - men, women, and children, walking around gnawing on very large turkey thighs. I could not help but take pictures of Joe as he participated in the activity. And in the picture here, it looks smaller than it actually was! CRAZY
After shot of the turkey leg...

Two small children with balloon bunny ears learning how to sword fight . . . one of the cutest things I have ever seen!

Check out the cool Renaissance buildings behind us!Old fashion Renaissance dancingA fire breathing, tight-rope walking, juggling, comedian. Weird, but very cool.

Going to the festival was like traveling back in time - people called us "My Lord, and My Lady" - they were wearing period clothing, speaking differently - etc. Quite the experience. We took in a lot of shows while we were there, most of them were very funny. My favorite was Zilch the Tory Steller, he tells a whole story and switched the 1st letter of all the words around, Tory Steller is an example - it is really Story Teller . . . . get it? He told the story or Parunnzel, or "Rapunzel" for those of your who don't speak Zilchs' language ;-) It was very funny, hard to follow in the beginning, but then your brain adapts to the language. A lot of the comedy acts were pretty inappropriate though, we left a few of them. All in all, it was enjoyable, but one time at the festival was enough to last me a life time I think.