Travel to the Past

For Jojo's early birthday celebration, he bought us tickets to go to Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament. Doors were open 1.5 hrs before the show so you can take a look around the castle. Right after the ticketing booth, they will give you color coded paper crowns representing the color of your knight. There are a total of 6 knights (yellow, blue, black & white, red & yellow, red and green), so there were 6 seating sections in the arena. We were gonna cheer for the Red & Yellow Knight. You also get to have your picture taken with someone, I forgot what her title was. Once inside, there were a lot of bars and souvenir shops where they sell all sorts of stuff from the common key chains and magnets to steel swords and costumes and all that. One hour before the show, the King held a knighting ceremony. For an additional $20, you can get "knighted". I wanted Jojo to do that but he declined (KJ ... hehehe).

There were 3 entrances to the arena, and the Chancellor announced which gate particular colors will enter. We were on the 2nd row of our section representing Perelada and the personal champion of the Count of Perelada - the Red & Yellow Knight, Lord del Font. On the table were our little banners, program and DVD (we upgraded our tickets), pewter plates and bowls, mug and napkin with the night's fare. Very generous serving too. We had garlic bread, tomato bisque, roasted chicken half, spare rib, herb-roasted potato, pastry of the castle, 2 mugs of soda and coffee. I wasn't able to finish my food, much less Finn. There weren't any kid's meal, everybody had the same portions. And, to keep with the theme of being in medieval times, no utensils. I knew this beforehand so I made sure not to forget my hand sanitizer and I also packed some wipes (^_^)

The show started soon after being seated and our Wench came by to brief us on the food and that we will be cheering for the Red & Yellow Knight. She also said that we can cheer for any other knight except the Green Knight ... hmmmm. So when the Knights were introduced one by one, their sections would be cheering loudly for him. When the Green Knight was introduced, everybody booed him ... hehehehe.

The show was very entertaining - beautiful Andalusians showing their skills and elegant maneuvers, great riders parading on their horses, a falcon free flying in the arena and of course, the games of the Knights concluding with the Joust and final battle between good and evil. Finn got so caught up in the fight that when the Prince was being whipped, he started crying! He even yelled "I hate you!" to the Green Knight. He was like this even when he was little, but at least he wasn't bawling like when we watched Superman Returns.

Anyway, in the middle of the program there was this sort of intermission where the Chancellor announced that in the black and white section, there was someone using utensils!!!The nerve! I guess their Wench reported this to him. So he goes on saying that utensils are only used by witches and what do they do with witches? Burn them! Bwahahahahaha. He said "if you don't want to end up like the roast chicken served to you, use your hands just like everybody else" (^_^) And so the crowd started cheering "use your hands". It was a fun atmosphere coz the different sections would show-off their cheers and jeered the other sections, especially the green.

The show lasted about 2 hours. I kind of wanted to wait for the King and his Knights after the show to take pictures, but there were a lot of people and it was late so we went home already.