July 12th-Abbey Medieval Festival and Tournament

Beautiful stained glass from the 1300s in the church.

Lord Benjamin.

Waiting for the Turkish Oil Wrestling to start. Hairy men cover themselves in extra virgin olive oil and then end up covered in grass by the end of the match. Not sexy but still fun to watch.

Kelsey thinks I look stupid in my hat. But, guess which one of us stood in the shade all day while the other was miserably hot?

It was a gorgeous sunny day.

Last weekend was the Abbey Medieval Festival and Tournament in Caboolture. I feel like my entire life is made up of running to catch some form of public transport. Everytime we walk out the door, I'm saying, "Hurry, hurry, we're going to miss the bus (or train or boat)". On this particular day, guess what? We did. We missed our ferry which made us late for our train. If we had missed the train, we would have had to wait an hour which meant we would have missed the opening ceremony and probably wouldn't have gotten tickets for the joust. I try to not get bent out of shape when we are running late since it happens all the time. I'd spend most of my life upset but I really, really wanted to see the joust and I really, really wanted to get there for the opening ceremony. We were walking as fast as we could because honestly, running wasn't even an option with my bad ankle. I imagine we looked rather funny. Speed walking into the train station, I made a wild guess at which train was the right one and led us to Platform 6 just as the train pulled in. We hopped on. Then I looked at Ben and said, "Should we ask someone if we're on the right train?" He did and we were, so off we went for the hour long train ride to Caboolture. Kelsey listened to her ipod, Ben napped on and off, Benji slept almost the whole way while I had the pleasure of listening to a couple of college students who were very intelligent. I could tell because they knew EVERYTHING, especially about America. Many of the train stations along the way have interesting and/or lovely murals. It's one of the nice little things about Brisbane that make it such a beautiful city....just that little extra effort to make the train station pretty:)

The festival itself was huge. Tickets to the joust were purchased first thing and we did get to see the opening ceremony so I was as happy as a clam. Kelsey immediately started complaining about the heat while I basked in it. My feet were warm for the first time in weeks. The Hare Krishnas were there with their vegetarian food stand. Bless them! When we go to any festival and see them, Kelsey and I know right away that we're going to have decent reasonably priced food...and more than we can finish on our plate. Benji enjoyed the military weapon demos,watching warriors battle, and a public flogging (he was just a bystander, not the one being flogged, of course.) Kelsey and I spent some time watching dances and she went to a presentation on "Surgery in the Middle Ages". Ben and I went to listen to the lecture on the stained glass windows in the gothic church on the grounds of the festival. We were tempted by camel rides but ultimately decided against it. The joust was a lot of fun and everyone at the festival seemed to really be enjoying their characters. We ended up staying until the closing ceremony then had to "run" to catch our train back to the city...we hurried as fast as we could to the platform, jumped on the train and then sat on it for 20 minutes waiting for it to leave.