We were halfway to the Medieval Village down at evocative Viller’s Abbey when Chris–who grew up in Houston–told me that no, he’d never been to the Houston Renaissance Festival. How do you grow up in Houston and never go to the wacky, wild and weird world of the Houston Renaissance Festival, right?! I have fond memories of perusing a table of handicrafts when I was probably 10 or so and spotting a small handmade instrument. A woman came up behind me, picked up one of them, started to play it and walked off. “Did she just…steal that…?” I wondered. “Well she’s wearing chain mail so maybe she works here…?” I sort of stared after her as the thought progressed, “Hold on, she’s wearing NOTHING BUT chain mail… DOES she work here?! If she does, what exactly does she do?!”
Other things you can do at the Houston Renaissance Festival include gnaw on a turkey leg, watch gladiators duel in a Greek-style arena, ride a camel, listen to wandering minstrels and sit in a beer garden. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem to make any sense so I guess it’s no wonder why I usually left feeling a little confused or like I’d kind of missed something. Also I think we should probably check it out next time we’re in Texas (we’ll leave the chain mail at home).
Medieval stocks and bonds 
bonjour, monsieur crusader 
wait, is this authentic?
But enough about Texas, we are talking about Belgium, and we’re not taking about the Renaissance period, we’re talking MEDIEVAL. I found out about the Medieval Fair while looking for information about another event at Viller’s Abbey. This place is beautiful and stunning—I love cathedrals and this one, although roofless and windowless, is no exception. The thousand-year-old compound fell into ruin when the French Revolution resulted in the disbanding of many abbeys but it benefitted from preservation efforts starting almost two hundred years ago. The broken walls and grassy courtyards are a perfect backdrop for a Medieval Fair! I had wanted to go to a Belgian beer hop harvest festival the same weekend but that was cancelled so our schedule was wide open; we snagged some of the last available tickets.
Will people be speaking French in ye absurdly accented language of olde?? Our French is not strong enough to definitively answer this, but it was strong enough to have a chat with a crusader about swords. People in costumes cooked porridge and broth over open fires and polished armor. A guy fashioned arrows by hand with a display of wicked-looking arrowheads of various designs. A lady tooled leather. A man displayed chain mail (with no one in it–hee hee). An orc walked by with his elvish wife. A green fawn towered over the fair on long, silt legs. Fire dancers swung flames in high arcs around them and blew it in fireballs from their mouths. A woman led a horse throughout the grounds occasionally, sometimes with an armored man on horseback. A man dressed as a pirate talked to a man in a kilt while we all watched some swordplay, and then a parade of furries/fawns danced by singing. Ok, so it was probably pretty similar to the Renaissance festival.
Unlike the Renaissance festival, or any American festival really, there wasn’t a lot of stuff to buy—you couldn’t buy arrows from the arrow maker or leather goods from the tooler, as far as we could figure. There also weren’t any foodstands besides a dried fruits and nuts stand, a dried sausage booth, and a woman selling spiced mead by the bottle. Everyone with food seemed to have brought it from home. The abbey brewery next door was open of course, so we headed over there at lunchtime, but there was not one person wandering around the abbey ruins with a turkey leg or sitting in a beer garden.
what were these tents for? did reenactors stay in them overnight? 
The kids did find a German-made bow and arrow (Isaac) and sword (Eloise), and they also enjoyed the lawn games like horseshoes, bowling, hit-the-castle-blocks-down-with-a-beanbag, stuff like that. As we were leaving mid-afternoon, people in all types of costumes were pouring into the abbey, enough that we wondered if we were missing something and should stick around, but the fair closed at six so how much more could there be to do? So we left with that usual feeling of maybe having missed the point, but still having had a good time. Better to leave the Medieval behind than draw it out too long and go Medieval on each other on the car ride back.
Our day got the highest stamp of Elo-approval: “This is more fun than I thought it would be!”
Many women were beautifully dressed in Medieval-style dresses that I would totally wear if I had one. I wore the same linen dress I wore in Italy and Greece this summer—a fantastic thrift store find with a braided faux-leather belt. I noticed several people giving me a look assessing whether I was in costume or not—the short dress, over tights, unfortunately looked rather similar to a page-boy outfit. So that was a mistake, but hey, it was better than wearing naked chainmail.
Overall, it was a fun enough fair that we would go out of our way to go again next year!
Eloise knighting Isaac 
Isaac knighting Eloise 
it’s fall! 
These GORGEOUS butterflies were all over the ivy-covered walls
Royal Summer Nights in Brussels
Stockel Market
Pot au Feu
Oui to Huy