Huzzah!

Renfair time!

Or to be totally accurate, The Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire!  And it's old enough that I believe it could be considered an Original (it celebrates it's 50th anniversary next year!).

We went a few weeks ago with two good friends from post here, plus their kids, so we had a good bunch of us heading out for good food and good fun.  Good clean fun, in fact - as advertised!  A perfect day weather-wise too.  Warm enough that even in the shade it was comfortable.  Couldn't have asked for a better day!

 

Those pictures are advertising for one of the groups they had performing at the Faire, the Washer Women.  I actually took the pictures, though, for all my caving friends.  Just seemed appropriate somehow ;)

Zach and the girls learned to dance right as we entered.  Zach got roped in as they needed another guy to even out pairs  :)  They were all so cute!  Zach was a great sport about it.

A parade passes through the Faire on regular intervals.  Musicians, soldiers, sailors, banner carriers, lords and ladies, and of course, the Queen (below on her chair).  It's a pretty impressive parade, actually.  The 'townsfolk' of the Faire line the way and call out to the parade too.  "God save the Queen,"  "Long live the queen," and similar calls.  Lots of noise and simple music and festive people in costume. 

 

On the subject of costumes, it must be recognized as one of the highlights of the Faire, of course.  You can see it in the parade, and a good number of costumes too, as the parade is pretty long, but you also see costumes on all the vendors, performers, and folk just wandering the Faire.  Not just historical costumes, either.  Fairy tale costumes, and just humorous ones too.  It's a fun excused to get dressed up a little!  For our group, one of my friends made garlands for all the girls that came with us.  When the littlest one didn't want to wear hers, I got to wear the extra :)  The wings of the left there were from a wing shop (no kidding).  I think this was the owner, or at least one of the workers.  Her wings were much more involved than the ones in the shop!  There are at least 3 pairs of wings on that 'set' that she's wearing - very ornate, and just gorgeous in the sunshine!  The pair on the right were just wandering the Faire.  He leaked water from his wooden tanks and tums at regular intervals, and she stood with her boat shoes in the puddles.  "No, not enough."  Really detailed costumes, too, for such silly ones!  Another lady we saw at about the same time at the couple was in a dress all of wood.  Like Dutch wooden shoes, except it was her whole outfit!

 

One of the funniest moments of the day was Zach during one of the groups performing.  The Merry Wives of Windsor were one of the groups performing.  The Wives are the serving wenches and the Windsor their tavern.  The show centers on limericks and drinking songs.  The Wives had two different shows they perform, depending on how ... ribald... the songs were.  We wandered into the Adult version. Yes, it warrants the capital letter!  One of the songs they did involved people from the audience.  Each man pulled up from the audience was the subject of a verse of the song - the Baker with the nice buns, etc.  Zach was one of the 'volunteers.'  Giving them credit, the Wife pulling the guys from the audience did ask first if she could "borrow" him :)  And you can ask me what character Zach was, but to be honest, after the first line of his verse, I was laughing so hard, I don't even remember what it was about!

Another highlight was the FOOD! Festival food, above and beyond!  The girls were gushing about Cake on a Stick (official name: Sin on a Stick).  Zach tried it - chocolate-covered cheesecake on a stick.  He enjoyed it, but said it was the richest cake he'd had in a while!  One of those desserts to split, I think :)  I'm not a big cheesecake person, so I indulged at the crepe stand - strawberries and chocolate (Nutella).  Yum!!

And the biggest fun of the day for me: Gnome-hunting!  I even earned my rank as Gnome Finder Extraordinaire (and yes, I have the certificate to prove it!).  At the kids area, you could pick up a map of the fair with lots of little X's marked.  In the area of the X's, gnomes were hidden in stalls.  The vendors provided their own gnomes, and the kids had to find where in the stall the gnomes were.  Once they found the gnome in the stand, they'd point it out to the vendor, who'd stamp the back of the map.  There were 26 gnomes to find throughout the whole fair.  The two below are just examples from one of the shops - in each stall they were different figurines, so it did make it more challenging and more fun!

PS - if you're in the SoCal area, the Faire is still running through the end of May, so head over to Irwindale and have some fun!