Today Jordan and I went to the art museum for a class project - she's supposed to visit 5 places of interest around Riverside and write about them for school. We went downtown and as we neared the museum, saw streets blocked off for a festival of some sort. We parked and walked toward the museum and as we crossed orange street entered a world 200 years past and a continent away. Apparently, this weekend is the Dickens festival and we happened upon it by accident. It's funny, but most of the interesting times we have are unplanned and unlooked-for. There were a lot of people dressed in period garb. Queen Victoria was there and Jordan curtsied for her and then asked her some questions about her life - imagine, an audience with the queen. There were some Scottish bagpipe players and reel dancers. Someone was stamping silver, gold, and bronze coins. There were booths for buying period clothing, books, crafts, etc. There were crafts for the kids, including lessons on etiquette for children (girls should be allowed to engage in "boyish activities" but only in the court, not in the street which would be unmannerly). We got to see some real corsets, Jordan had been curious about them so she got to see what they really looked like. She got to try out a spinning wheel. It was not a huge festival - took up three blocks. We ended up spending about a half hour at the art museum (as you can imagine, it wasn't that big) but spent almost two hours at the festival. It was a rather fun afternoon.
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