Arizonian Renaissance Festival

To end our trip with a big bang we went to the Renaissance Festival! It is about an hour away from Gilbert and is a medieval town located in the middle of the desert! It was amazing, there were all sorts of shops and activities, people were dressed up all over the place, there was medieval music and food and games, it was like walking into a fairytale!

This fairy gave each of us a magical fairy stone





















There were jousting competitions through out the day. Each section was assigned a knight to cheer for, there were two good and two evil knights, we were assigned to one of the evil knights whose colors were burgundy and black, unfortunate he didn't win but he was really funny and was always making some sort of silly face at us, even though we were his fan section he still wasn't nice to us, he was just pure evil.





















It was a hot day so Reece got this neat sorbet treat to cool off, it was served in half of an orange peel



Then we tried our luck at the crossbow, I will be honest and say I was horrible at aiming ... its really hard! But Reece of course blew everyone out of the water and won a prize for Bethany, his sweet maiden. I guess being an amazing archer in his youth is still paying off.







Bethy and I made sure to stop off at the greyhound house becuase of our animal obsession, they had a bunch of greyhounds just loungin around for people to pet and play with, oh they were so cute and sweet!













Then we took a ride on an elephant! Such a neat activity, it was interesting to see how they felt and so fascinating to ride!





Reece and Andrew wanted to try out the manly sport of hatchet throwing, it looked pretty difficult, but they did a good job



To end the day we all gathered at the brass rubbing shop to make out own rubbings. All the boys did different dragons, bethy did a huge angle and inscription that came from a grave marker in a cathedral in Europe and I did the symbols of the four evangelists as a result from studying them in my art history classes and thinking that symbols are the coolest thing ever. My mom and dad having brass rubbings of knights in their red living room so I have always found brass rubbings to be very neat and special.





















At the end of the day we were all so exhausted from having so much fun! It seriously was one of the most amazing festivals I have ever been to, and believe me I have been to a lot of festivals! Since we stayed until the very end of the day we were stuck in the huge line of cars that were people leaving the festival. This could have made us all grumpy but then we noticed something unusual in one of the cars ahead of us, as we got closer we realized it was a monkey just getting some fresh air on the ride home, it made the drive very entertaining.