There be pirates, matey

So this weekend, the gang of three decided to go back in time-- to a time of ladies, knights, kings, queens, jousts, knife throwing... wenches and pirates?? Ah, yes, the Renaissance Festival. A place of good eatin' and random people dressed in doublets, tights, feathered caps, and puffy sleeves.

We drove to nearby Annapolis to experience the Maryland Renaissance Festival where it was Pirates weekend. From a non-costumed perspective, I would say that Renn Fests are both interesting and weird. There's so much to see (especially at this one just because it's HUGE!). We saw King Henry VIII, picking up ladies to be wives. We saw this old lady with a goose... turns out that she was Mother Goose! There were knights and jousts-- that part was really cool because they also had a part where they beat each other over the head with clubs! Who doesn't want to say Huzzah when people get beat over the head???

Gordon threw battle axes, with a funny hat to boot-- however, the hat didn't help make the axes stick into the target! Jenny, Gordon and I threw knives and some of them actually stuck! And we got cool prizes. We ate and ate and ate. There's just SOOO much food! Enough to make you want to puke. We saw magic shows-- why are there always magic shows at renaissance festivals?? There was this lady that was all bend-y and playing a recorder-- how that's renaissance-y, I don't know, but I couldn't look (ew).

What I DIDN'T get about the Renn Fest is... why pirates? The Renaissance was from about the 15th to the late 16th centuries. Pirates (as most of us know it-- the Johnny Depp kind, I'm guessing) didn't really show up in history until about the 17th century. However, there were some pirates attracted to the trade between Asia and Europe in the 16th century, it wasn't really part of the Renaissance. So my best guess is that pirates are the new trend-- thanks to Johnny Depp and his wonderful friends at Disney. Also... maybe the people at the Renn Fest (the ones who dress up) wanted to include their friends in the dress up madness and created Pirates weekend.

Either way, the Renn Fest was cool to see even though I wasn't dressed up as a lady, wench, manimal, or pirate. Good people watching there, too... the Renn Fest draws ALL sorts of people. Never thought I'd see an Asian fairy, pirate, or wench. And it was funny to see a full-on period dressed Pirate... talking on his cell phone.

I think that renaissance festivals aren't so much about the Renaissance as they are about the pop culture perspective of the time period. When people think Renaissance, I guess most people don't think about great art and literature, the plague, exploration, and the reformation. Nowadays, they think about incense, beersteins, tight corsets that make you pop out of dresses, fanatical people dressed as anything from wood nymphs to manimals to full on fairies, and tights. Maybe they just really like that "renaissance" style...