We’re still living in the past here today, and this post hearkens back to 2003. We had discovered the Renaissance Festival, held in the booming metropolis of Robert, LA the year before and had decided to make it an annual family tradition. The Friday after Thanksgiving would be our Renfest day and this particular instance on November 28, 2003 was the first in a long series of visits for us.
As last time, these are/were raw images taken with the Olympus E-10.
We got to the grounds, parked the car and entered the self described “Royal Village of Albright” as shown below in the map from around 2006:
We collected our programs, as we wanted to schedule our activities to see some of the shows we had just gotten a glimpse of the year before.
First on our list was the Limey Birds. An interesting trio, made even more amazing that they are still touring to this day. One of the original that is, the blond on the right seems to be the ring leader.
We were at the King’s Stage for the viewing, sort of in the back and they noticed me taking pictures. They pointed me out to the crowd and began to make comments about “Oh, he likes to takes pictures, does he? Wink, wink, wink…”. It was all in good fun.
After the Limey Birds, we made our way to the Queen’s stage to take in Zoltan the Adequate. Much like the Limey Birds, Zoltan is still doing his thing after all these years.
After Zoltan, we hurried back to the King’s Stage for this next troupe, whose name unfortunately escapes me. They were excellent musicians and we enjoyed listening to them. Amusingly, the final song of the set was a cover of Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”.
From there we headed back to the Queen’s stage (notice a common theme here) for quick show from “The Executioners” who were very funny and engaged in a lot of audience participation:
By this point, it was getting to be lunch time, so we wandered over to the Gypsy Camp, which had tents with places to sit while eating lunch. While eating, we got to enjoy this gentleman who was a “Professional Insulter”. He made his way around the crowd leaving no-one unscathed in his humor.
Following the insulter was this singer playing the mandolin:
After lunch, we headed back to the King’s Stage and encountered this juggler doing his thing.
Once back at the King’s Stage, we sat for “The Duelists“, who at least one of them is still doing renfest performances.
It was getting late in the day and we headed to the opposite side of the ground for a final showing of the joust. While enroute, we stopped at the Gypsy Camo again to get a drink and encountered these entertaining folks:
Making our way the jousting arena, we took our seats and the show began:
And eventually, this fine jouster was the victor!
It was getting dark, and we headed out taking in the final round of performances:
The grand finale was this amazing fire eater….
That’s all for this week.
Take care,
