Renaissance Festival!!!!

The day before yesterday we went to the Florida Ren Fest!  http://www.ren-fest.com/
I had been searching online for awhile trying to find a good faire to go to this year. I think we got spoiled with the one in AZ because it is one of the nicest ones in the nation! 
When I found this one I thought it looked fun, so I asked Mom about it, and she thought it sounded fun too!

Dad, Eli, Thomas, Daniel and myself were the only ones that wanted to go.
It was about a two and a half hour drive from the campground we were staying at in Big Cypress; the festival is north of Miami.  I was glad we went on a Sunday - traffic was not too bad.
We arrived early and got a good parking spot, and thankfully the ticket line was not too long :)

 

.
Once we got inside the village (aka The Shire), Eli and I began looking for a weapons shop; we both love medieval weapons.  There were a couple of interesting shops, but my favorite was the Hollow Earth Swordworks!!  Their craftsmanship was amazing - their swords were $30-$300!!!
Their solid wood swords and daggers were guaranteed not to break against any other wood sword, bone, or flesh.  If by chance it did break, they did they would fix it or replace it with a new one absolutely free!

 

At the beginning of the day one of the street-side vendors asked me if I would like to have my portrait sketched for free!! (to help bring in a crowd)
He was actually very talented and did great job!!  I was happy not to pay $25 to have it done either :)

I think that the boys' favorite part of the festival was the trebusheas!!!

 Daniel was pretty excited when he got to shoot one off!
They had a much bigger one that just the reenactors got to shoot, and then the smaller one which Daniel got to fire. The one we got to fire would shoot an 8lb concrete ball about 75-80 yards out in to a lake, but the bigger one would go almost twice that!!!

The reenactors were getting ready to fire the big one... They had a live demonstration a few times a day.  It took four full grown men to hold it down while they got ready to load it!

 

Everyone thought it was pretty cool!

 

We went to the joust that afternoon and ended up sitting on the side of evil.
There were 5 knights in all, three good and two bad.  We were surprised to find that one of our evil knights, was the same actor as one of the good knights we had seen at the festival we usually go to in AZ!!!
How cool is that!
http://ticknortribe.com/2012/02/az-ren-fest.html

 

This is our knight, Sir Rolen getting ready for the joust.

 

Here are all 5 of the Knights.
The jousts only lasts about 45 min each; there are three different shows each day.
  We only went to the last two.

 

This is our arrogant knight being carried off the field after the French Knight killed him.

(he so deserved it) LOL!!

A little kid that was cheering in his stands, actually started crying after our knight got his throat slit, he really thought the knight died!
Afterwards, our knight explained to the little boy that it was just a show, and he really didn't die.  I don't know if that kid was totally convinced.  :)

The day ended way to quickly, and we all had a blast!
I hope we can go do another one soon.