I was talking to Wendy a few days ago and she was telling me about the Renaissance Festival going on in Michigan. This prompted me to look up Kansas City's one as I knew they had an annual one too (turned out this was its 29th year). Well, lo and behold, we were right smack in the middle of the festival.

And so yesterday, Phil and I got in the car, drove 4 hours to Kansas City (and then 4 hours back later that day) and checked out the fair.

It was a completely new experience for me. The whole setting and atmosphere of the place (the festival covered about 16 acres) was just incredible. Quaint wooden buildings everywhere without so much as a fan or proper lighting; merchants selling their products left and right -- all dressed up in medieval suits and many of them speaking in, sometimes bad, English accents; they had even organized several people to go walking around in full costume and pretending to be this Lord or that Lady or a jester and interact with the crowd. In fact, there were many in the general public that even joined in and dressed up as well.

Personally, it had a very outdoor-untechnology-mall feel to it (mainly because there were so many shops around). It also had a fair amount of games like those you find at carnivals or arcades.

What set it apart from actually being and outdoor-untechnology-mall-with-and-an-outdoor-untechnology-arcade were the shows.

The festival grounds was split into different areas -- Sherwood Forest, for instance, was one area -- and each area had scheduled shows occuring frequently throughout the day.

We managed to catch the one thing I really wanted to see there... Jousting!


It was just fantastic. They did a good job in building our excitement by interacting with us before the joust (they split us up such that one side supported a 'good knight' and the other supported the 'bad knight' and gave us chants and mottos and such).

The joust itself lasted no more than five to ten minutes, if even, but it was still extrordinarily entertaining. Partly, I believe, due to the involvement they encouraged from the crowd.

First the two knights went at each other with their lances a few times and then they switched to a sword fight and finally, an all out hand-to-hand brawl (we managed to catch that last part on vid).