Medieval Times!

Hey'a, everyone! Today I went to Medieval Times! Medieval Times, for those of you who don't know, is a dinner theater-type place where you get to watch a medieval tournament while eating a medieval-style meal. One of my friends was going with her co-op, and she was nice enough to invite me to come along. I really enjoyed it, and I definitely want to go again sometime.

As you can see, it's in a castle of sorts. You can't tell from the picture, but the "castle" is actually part of a mall.

This is the entrance inside the mall itself. When we went in, they gave us tickets that told us where we were supposed to be sitting. (There are six seating areas, each marked with a different color.) As it turned out, we were in the yellow section, in two of the tables closest to the jousting area, so I got a really good view of the whole thing. (That being said, it was darkish in there for a lot of the time, so a good number of my pictures turned out pretty lousy.)

Before we went into the actual arena, though, we walked around the gift shop area. They sold all sorts of stuff, both costume-y, souvenir-ish type items and more interesting items like swords, armor, and weaponry. I would've liked to buy a sword or dagger, but they were all more than I wanted to spend.

Eventually, we were called into the arena by the Lord Chancellor/MC. The first half of the show consisted mostly of the king, princess, and lord chancellor talking and people like a falconer and two knights (who weren't in the actual tournament) and their squires doing demonstrations about different aspects of medieval times. My favorite part of this was when the knights were demonstrating different fighting moves. During this time, the servers were also bringing out the food: garlic bread, oven-roasted chicken, herb-roasted potato, corn on the cob, and the pastry of the castle for desert. My favorite part of the actual meal were the potatoes, which were absolutely delicious. The rest of the food was fairly good as well, but the chicken was a bit on the messy side, since there was no silverware.

Finally, it was time for the actual tournament! There were six knights competing in the tournament: the blue knight, the red and yellow knight, the green knight, the red knight, the black and white knight, and the yellow knight. The people in each seating area were supposed to cheer for the knight whose colors matched those of their section. As I said, I was in the yellow section, so I was cheering for the Yellow Knight. This is the only picture I got of him that turned out halfway decent. As you can see, it's still pretty blurry. Sorry about that.

The first part of the tournament after the knights were introduced consisted of various tests of the knights' skills of horsemanship and accuracy with their lances. The Yellow Knight did quite well in all these. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures.

Then it was time for the actual joust. I'm pretty sure most of you probably know how a joust works, but I'll explain it anyway. First, the two knights who were jousting would ride towards each other and try to knock each other off their horses with their lances. Once one had been knocked off, he would try to knock the other off. Once both were on the ground, they'd fight hand-to-hand until one had been defeated. I do have a few somewhat decent pictures of the hand-to-hand portions of some of these battles, which I'll post here:

The Yellow Knight was in the second joust, which he won. Then the Green Knight decided that he'd rather fight the Yellow Knight than the Red Knight (who he was supposed to fight). Much to my disappointment, the Green Knight won that battle, which meant that he and the Red Knight would face off for the final battle. I and my friends were all rooting for the Red Knight to win. I actually took a video of this battle, as well as one or two others, but I can't seem to get them to upload. Once again, I apologize.

In the end, the Green Knight won. The show ended shortly after that, and we headed for home. As I said, I really enjoyed it (other than the Yellow Knight having lost). Also, I now want to find a way to put a tournament in one of my stories, since I now have an idea of what they were like. We'll have to see how that works out.

Thanks for reading! Nai haryuvalyë melwa rë!*
- Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)
*May you have a lovely day!