Over the weekend I had my first chance to head up to Sterling, NY to visit The Renaissance Festival.  Now admittedly, I’m not normally into this kind of thing.  The dressing up in costumes and talking in silly accents isn't really up my alley.  But this was the “Highland Fling” weekend and because we are proud of our Scottish heritage, my family decided to go check it out.

 

The day started out great.  The weather was perfect.  The sun was shining.  We paid our admission and we were in.  Now on to the bagpipes and drums!

I know that some people can’t stand them.  But I have always loved the sound of someone who could play the bagpipes well.  So I was excited to see that the first show we would sit down to was a display of Scottish music and dance.  It actually brought a tear to my eye as I heard the band play “Scotland The Brave” on the way out.  That was super cool.

We didn’t actually get to the festival grounds until around 11am so by the time the first show was over it was time for lunch.  My daughter wanted a turkey leg.  She takes after her daddy!  So we got one to share and daddy grabbed a beer.  Ah…I’m in heaven.  I’m sharing a turkey leg with my daughter and I’m having a beer with my brother.  Now let’s go watch some guys toss around telephone poles.  This is Scottish living!  It’s off to the Caber toss.

That’s a Scottish game where they take these large poles and see if they can flip them end for end.  I was impressed.  The kids…not so much.  But my son was still in the spirit.  He wanted a wooden sword.  So we headed up the hill to get him a sword.  Then he wanted to see the pirate show.  So we headed down the hill to watch the pirate show.  Up we went.  Down we went.  I certainly earned my points walking up and down those hills all day.

But after the pirate show came the rain.  We knew it was on its way all day by the look of the sky but boy did it come!  It started to come down in buckets!  That kind of killed the day.  We tried to hit up a couple more shows.  Some of my family threw some axes.  But for the most part, we were done.

All in all it was a nice day out with the family.  I’m not sure that I’d be into it again because that is a whole different culture there.  But it was an experience that I was glad I had with my family.

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