Sean and I were super excited when we saw in the ACS (Army Community Service) gazette that there were a few Medieval festivals last weekend. We love a good renaissance fair (who doesn't? maybe some people but they are no fun!) and were super excited to take the kids since we had a really good time at one before Zerek was born. The ruins were close, about 45 minutes, into the Belgium country side. We parked in a huge field (which had some amazing views), loaded up on a bus and headed for the ruins. In this area english isn't a given, and I keep forgetting that most of Belgium speaks french, muddled through buying tickets and headed on it. Holy crap, the amount of people that were there was astonishing! There is something to be said to be a a medieval festival at the ruins of a castle dating back to 1000AD. They took much pride in making it super authentic to the time period! I would say about 80% of people were dressed up from kids to adults and it is totally the thing to do (dressing up at a renaissance festival in the states might be seen as a little nerdy) and they costumes were amazing. However, the amount of people really made it unpleasant to walk around. The base of the Castle had a loop around it but it was so hard to see anything with all the people stopping or coming form another direction. The ruins had little taverns at the base (rooms to walk into that had a beer tap and some tables) that I though would be cool to sit it but they were so loud and full that we walked right out. We finally made it out of the base area and walked up onto one of the hills. This was a little better but not much. Ended up eating lunch at a small cafe they had there which was a nice break from the crowds. When we left the cafe we looked at the draw bridge that went into the ruins and pretty much decided to call it a day. It was really cool, don't get me wrong, but really hard to enjoy with so many people. Poor Zerek couldn't get out of the backpack and was totally cranky by the end. I did manage to take a few pictures of our excursion. Overall, would have been really fun if there weren't so many people.
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| Ready to go! |
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| On our way in. |
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| Blacksmith demo...Sean wondered how he had so much chest hair left doing without a shirt on. |
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| Looking up from the base of the ruins |
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| Finally a break for lunch! |
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| Looking down onto the drawbridge and decided we were not going to go in there! |
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| Another view of the castle |
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| Bella really wanted to watch the cannon fire, then it did, and she said "I don't want to do that again!" |
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| View from the parking lot! |
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| Another view! |
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