Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Scottish Dancers, Busking (not me), Cuban entree with African Pop, Tornado Potatoes - and Lovers in a Dangerous Time.

On Saturday morning, Nikkie and I headed up to Holland Park for the  Surrey Fusion Festival , which is only the best darn festival of all. The sound of bagpipes lured us into the park, and the first stage we saw had two hornpipe dancers on it. I don't know about your computer, but mine isn't sharing the music for these ... unfortunately. You can just get someone to stand behind you and whistle, if it makes it more real. Sorry.
Next on the stage were these two little lassies showing off their skills.
As we walked around, we came across some performers - these were from Surrey's Heritage group, and they were performing vignettes throughout the weekend, telling the story of pioneer life in our province.
And of course, there was the Pan Pipe guy, playing Hallelujah this time around.Since this video has no sound (at least not on my computer) you can watch him and listen to this.
One part of the park that really intrigued me was The Sound Garden. Pianos make really neat planters, don't you think?
I'm not sure how serious musicians would appreciate these instruments embedded in big pots ... but they were inviting to the music makers that passed by.
I don't know how the Jolly Green Giant's utensils ended up in a music garden, but they did.
A little jazz, anyone?
This busker was a very good busker, indeed. Hope he made lots of money!
I can't remember what country this bike represented - it's a big gaudy compared to Breehy.
Of course there were Cirque Soleil people walking around - or at least they could have been Cirque Soleil people. They were certainly tall enough.
And there was a tiny corner of Newfoundland in a Canada tent.
By this time, our tummies were rumbling, so it was a huge decision what to eat. There were food tents there from so many countries - making a choice was really difficult.

I chose a Chicken Empanade from Peru - it was very good, nice flaky pastry. If this makes you hungry for your very own Chicken Empanade, here is Paula Deen's recipe - so now you can make your own.
I wasn't sure about the heat content of this food, so decided to buy a drink. They were selling Coke products, which don't seem much like an  international food festival item to me, so I wandered across the grass to an African tent, where I purchased this -
Pineapple ginger pop. It was different. At first, I could just taste the pineapple, not as sweet as the Crush product, but then the ginger kicked in. Wow.

And I was concerned about the Empanada!

However, Nikkie wasn't very curious about any of this world food, so she stayed in Canada with ... you got it ....
French Fries and Coke.

We walked around a bit more, then headed home. It looked like it was going to rain, and some of us were getting sore feet. However, the plan was to come back up after dinner for the Big Concert - which we did!

Bruce Cockburn was playing on the Concord stage, and we hung around and listened to him sing and play guitar for a while, long enough for the words Lovers In A Dangerous Time to embed themselves in my head. I'm still ear worming them.
A lot of vendors were closing down their tents by now, as it was almost 10pm. However, we found the Colombia one still popping, with lineups even. They were selling, among other things, the Tornado Potato, which I've always wanted to try.
Nikkie was enjoying hers, until she decided she just had to have catsup with it. The Colombians never had any catsup, so she walked over to the India tent, where they were selling French Fries - and had a good supply of catsup on the table - for their customers. (You may know this at ketchup, by the way. Never sure of the correct spelling of that particular condiment.)

I pretended I didn't know her as she walked up, took the catsup bottle, and squirted it the length of her potato. Some people's kids, huh?
It was yet another fun day - except for my poor toes. I didn't know it until Sunday morning, but my new flip flops had been eating away at the area between my toes all day - so I had developed a huge blister that broke into a raw mess. Sorry I didn't get a picture to share with you.


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