Medieval Fair at Guérande

Owing to a surprise windfall of income over the past few days, we decided to take off about four hours this Saturday and pay a little visit to the Guérande Medieval Fair(e)(sic). They've had this every year but we have always missed it - usually too busy, or we'd forget and only see the signs until a week after it was over. Guérande is an ideal location, and made the medieval fairs I attended in the US look rather bland by comparison. US fairs are typically open-field events with pavilions and tents everywhere, and plenty of enthusiasm, but it's hard to compete with having a fair wrapped around and through a genuine medieval walled city.

There were plenty of folks there in costume, both workers and visitors - In fact, we were surprised at how many wandering princesses and wenches and knights and pageboys kept drifting in from the parking lot. It made the whole city a little surreal, driving down cobblestone streets past parked cars and scooters and small clusters of young people furiously texting away, while Rapunzel-esque costumed Ladies-in-Waiting (for what?) drifted down the sidewalks trailing long ribbons and often disparate parts of their outfits (It was bloody windy).

They did a great job of tarting the place up, and we didn't see half of the full production. When we arrived after lunch, they were still setting up the main exposition area, where it looked like they might have jousting (and probably a fair bit of wenching) this evening. There were some excellent huge dining halls being assembled too, though I didn't have the chance to check out what might be the main course for dinner. We refrained from spending any money that we didn't have anyway, though the smell from the on-location breadmaker's stall was enticing - Huge round loaves of hot, just-from-the-oven bread were piled in rowdy jumbles.

The dance troupe shown below keep popping up all over the city inside the walls, singing and doing various routines to medieval music (and modern medieval, such as Blackmore's Night's "Fires at Midnight"). This served nicely to remind me that I need to get some more Blackmore's Night CDs someday, to provide an elegant balance to thrashing away in the workshop to stuff like Send More Paramedics. We took a huge pile of pics, and I'll post more in coming days as I have the time. At least now my parents can get a glimpse of Guérande when the sun is out!