Dickensian Christmas Festival

Ryan, Megan and I went to Rochester yesterday for the Dickensian Christmas Festival. Rochester is a historic town whose claim to fame is Charles Dickens. They have museums and lots of themed events. This Christmas festival is the kick off for the season, and tons of people came out. The event was interesting, they had "actors" or volunteers dressed in traditional victorian dress, and they were roaming the streets ready for a photo-op or just running an event. There were also readings and shows throughout the town. They had different areas, one was a stage where there was a concert band and a choir sang, they had a huge craft fair, a smallish amusement park (mid-way like) for the kids, plus all of the regular shops were open. We arrived at about 10:30am, and by the time we went into a few shops and stopped for lunch, it was time for the main parade down main street. All of the performers paraded down (as a chance for everyone to see them I guess). After that parade, Ryan and I were ready to go home!! Only 5 more hours before the tour bus heads back!! We did find things to do. We heard the choir sing. There was one boy in the choir who was clearly not impressed with being dressed up and displayed to hundreds of people. We walked through the craft fair. There were so many people that we didn't actually get a chance to SEE all of the booths, but I am confident that they were just as interesting as the one's we did see. We spent about an hour in the town cathedral. We listened to the choir practice (the acoustics are phenomenal) and someone was playing the organ. I wasn't feeling great still, so while I had a rest Ryan wandered around the building and out into the court yard. They did have a little cemetary, with tombstones so old they didn't have any writing left on them. There were a few we could read that dated back to the early 1800's. We had a really nice lunch/dinner at an italian place, and then waited for the end of the day parade to start. It was a really beautiful candle lit parade, which ended at the ampitheatre for a group carol sing. There must have been a thousand people packed into a very small space! I couldn't sing, but it sure did sound nice. They also had a "snow fall". I put that in brackets because it was man made, and also, it wasn't snow. Rather than blowing potato flakes or paper or whatever they might usually use, they blew bubbles! It resulted in a VERY realistic snowfall, except it didn't melt when it hit people or the ground. But watching it in the air, I would have sworn that it was a real snowfall! It was at least 10 degrees, so I knew it couldn't possibly have really been snowing! It was funny to listen to the kids though, some of whom have probably never seen a real snowfall. They were running around trying to catch the snowflakes, and some teenagers tried to have a 'snowball fight', but that didn't work out so well!

We even got home at a decent hour! It was a pretty great day. A really nice start to the Christmas season!