Up North

I'm quite behind on my blog posts. It's all these vacations I keep going on. Tough life.

A couple of weeks ago, Ben and I took a lovely vacation, just the two of us, for the weekend. One of his coworkers was getting married in Charlevoix (pronounced char-le-voy, which drives my French-speaking father crazy). So to use the popular hand-Michigan map, we live down in the thumb joint and Charlevoix is basically on the tip of the ring finger. Way up there.

We had heard good things about northern Michigan, and let me say, it met and even exceeded our expectations. Seriously, it's a gorgeous place. I would easily live there if it wasn't hours from everything. Except awesomeness.

The wedding was at Castle Farms which is considered the oldest castle in America (so I've heard). Beautiful ceremony and reception. Delicious cake. Slightly awkward being at a wedding where you don't know anyone, including the bride, and have only met the groom once or twice. But fun nonetheless. I enjoyed getting all dressed up, since these days that doesn't happen very often. And let's face it, I can be pretty cute.

Backtracking a bit, on our way up north, we stopped at the Renaissance Festival. We had mediocre expectations, but we were highly impressed. It was a lot of fun. 

I was expecting dinky booths and basically lots of cheesiness. It was really well done. We enjoyed walking around the booths (I was highly tempted to buy a flowery headdress or a fairy wand) and eating the food (the pickle was awesome, but we both thought the turkey legs looked disgusting). 

The best part was the shows. We saw a hilarious comedy show, an impressive fire juggler, plus a falconer and jousting. We could have stayed there all day.