Carnival Madness

Published September 8, 2008

This summer was the summer of amusement parks and carnivals.  As much as it rained, the sunny days were absolutely great!  Especially where events were held in town like Buskerfest, the Ex, and Wonderland. I had never been to Buskerfest before, and so I wanted to attend this year.  I asked around but it seemed nobody really wanted to go so I decided to head down on my own anyway, no company like one’s own!  Plus, you miss out on a lot if you just don’t go, so I did.  :) It was a fun carnival like atmosphere on the streets.  Clowns, people on stilts, street artists and tons of street performers.  It was fun to sit around, watch and take pictures of all the performers.  A good experience, all to support a good cause for Epilepsy Toronto, so it was well worth attending.

The week after, I went to see Cirque de Solei!  YEAH!  You know, people had always told me how amazing of a show it would be to watch, but I never believed that it could be that good.  Let me just say that if you haven’t seen Cirque Saltimbanco, you MUST GO.  MUST..  It was the ORIGINAL cirque show and its the oldest running one.  Kathy and I missed the show in Toronto, so we ended up catching it in Hamilton.  The drive up was a disaster, it took like 2.5 hours when normally it should’ve only taken 45 minutes or so.  Rush hour traffic was a nightmare.  Once we arrived, we stuffed our faces with fast food, bought some pop and popcorn, then was awestruck by the amazing performers in the show.

If you’ve never been before, its kind of neat.  There are gorgeously made costumes with tons of color, interesting characters that speak a made up language that you can only understand through emotion and actions of the characters, and most interestingly, the show was interactive.  Members of the audience would be teased, pulled up on stage, or just plain made fun of…  Everyone that was picked was a good sport, so it was really hilarious to watch people get teased by the Cirque crew. There were different performances too.  Jugglers, balancing acts, clown comedy.  

The most amazing one I think, was these two girls who did a swinging act from the ceiling.  They litterally shared one swing and sat on each other, hanging and swinging off each other’s bodies.  Let me just say, that it was incredibly sexy and hot.  You could see the men in the building just staring at these two women completely dazzled.  To be fair, they brought out two super buff men afterwards who did an equally awesome balancing performance in a show of brute strength, haha.