Renaissance Fest Labor Day Weekend

So with the weather finally beginning to cool down, we decided to do our feast of fantasy event today at the Minnesota Renaissance festival. Although it probably got up to the 90s, we had a lovely time. Here are a few shots from the day!

I just happened to catch this while we were walking around the grounds, but something about this shot really speaks to me. I love shots of the backs of people. This is a harpist who was carrying her harp around with her.

This is another shot that I just really like. It was belly dance weekend and I took this of a woman siting near us as we waited for the dancing to begin.

It was very exciting to discover that Cassandra was back and dancing again. According to a woman who sat behind me and who claimed to be a friend, Cassandra has recently had some kind of less invasive hip surgery and replacement and had not been dancing for a while.  It was wonderful to see her back. Her personality shone forth in her dancing as strongly as ever, although we couldn't appreciate some of her stomach moves as much because of then (I guess) age appropriate "caftan" that she wore to dance in.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this guy, who always reminds me of a Lewis Carroll knight.  He was having trouble with his horse today and reining him in pretty harshly. I'm not sure what exactly was going on.

This gentleman was in the audience.

Some of the jousting armor was pretty impressive!

It was hot - and somehow this image reminds me of a Degas, even though he didn't have too many mythical animals in his paintings!

This guy had a lot more personality than the Geico Gecko!

And you can't see it so much from here, but this was the spitting image of Snow White complete with a bluebird on her shoulder.

A lovely purple dresssed couple!

Here are the hosts of our feast!

We got to sit on the side this tie and had a bit better view.  They focussed the special entertainment on belly dancing - so we had a day full of dancing. (The only shows we had watched before hand were two Middle Eastern dance performances and a piece of the jousting.) Here is one of the dancers from Caravan. They perform on the Gypsy stage and do a whole dress a member of the audience up like a Pasha routine.

We had really enjoyed Cale the Juggler at the previous feast, so we were very happy to see him again. He is a good juggler and a fun entertainer.

One member of our party was extremely loud and aggressive.

 We got to see fire eating by Johnny Phoenix, who also got to experience first hand the gregariousness of our neighbor to the left.

This woman who leaned into the window was also quite fetching.

Caravan danced for us twice, performing with fans the second time and then at the end a tribal troupe came in and performed.

Then before we knew it , it was 7:00 and time to leave. We got n the car and headed for home (but not before making a quick trip (despite the storm) to Whole Foods for a few supplies for the upcoming week.