Dickens Faire

We attended the Dickens Faire in San Francisco on Sunday.  Rick and I drove down and met up with assorted family members for a day of Victorian shopping, eating and general revelry.  That’s Nicki, Sara and Ryan on the right above.  This was before Nicki bought her hat from the Bosphorus that she wore for the remainder of the day and well into the evening.  Ryan looks like some random dude wearing a suit but he had a bowler hat on most of the time, fitting in with the whole Victorian vibe. 

Sara even had a newsboy cap, going for the Oliver Twist look. 

There are a whole host of characters that roam the venue.  We saw Charles Dickens (of course.  It was his faire, after all), Jacob Marley, the Cratchits, various chimney sweeps (if you see a chimney sweep, give him a kiss on the cheek and you’ll have good luck), Mad Sal and her Ladies’ Oratorical and Recreational Society (with an emphasis on the recreational, wink wink).   

We saw shops selling magic wands, jewelry, books, pottery and Victorian Clothing.  The picture above and below are from The Dark Garden, a shop that specializes in corsetry.  The windows had live mannequins and if you were missing one of the men in your party you could generally find them loitering outside this shop.  They claimed to be most interested in the engineering of the undergarments and how they made certain aspects of a ladies anatomy look like it was defying gravity.

The very first thing we did was stop for tea at Cuthbert’s Tea Shoppe.  We sat ourselves down and had a nice cuppa and some scones and crumpets to fortify ourselves for the day’s activities.   Which was mostly more eating.

There were meat pies, fish and chips, roasted chestnuts, bangers and mash.  I had falafel with tzatziki sauce because nothing quite says Victorian Christmas like Greek food.  Hey Sara had dolmas, so I wasn’t the only one.  I did have hot buttered rum to make up for it (prompting Ryan to tell a joke about cider that I can’t repeat here…).

It was a fun, fun day and if you are in the California Bay Area it’s worth the $22 to get in. 

One last picture of a teeny flower stand tucked into an alley.  It’s kind of dark but it looked so real it really did transport us back in time, if just for a few hours.