Scarborough Renaissance Festival: Part One

When I visited my sister in Texas recently, we decided to go to the Scarborough Renaissance Festival, which is about an hour away from where she lives. Neither of us had ever been to a Renaissance fair(e) before, nor are we the type of people that would be particularly interested in participating in such events, but we were super excited to go.

We went mainly for the cultural observation of it all—and maybe partly so we could walk around gnawing on a turkey leg, day-drinking, yelling out things like "Huzzah!" and adding an extra "e" onto any word we felt like. We ended up doing all of those things and so much more—the fair covered 35 acres and even though we stayed until it closed for the night we still didn't see everything.

We missed the turtle races, the live chess and a few other shows because we never did cave and buy a map (by the end of the day we agreed that it probably would have been worth the $2.95), but we did see a joust, met some mermaids, watched half of a falconry show, rode an elephant (Hi Jean!), ate lunch and dinner (and dessert), drank some mead and still found ourselves surprised when it was closing time.

Magic wands, flower crowns, velvet-and-leather-everything, horns, furs, jewelry, pewter figurines and pretty much anything else you can think of was available at the fair. We didn't buy much but we could have browsed for days, imagining ourselves in chain mail, lace-up-boots and floor-length sleeves.

The turkey leg was everything we wanted it to be and more, and by the end of the night I was still carrying it around, photographing it in front of various Renaissance Fair staples—"Here's my turkey leg in front of the sign that says turkey legs!"—so very much worth the price of admission.