We were able to purchase a GREAT breakfast, and coffee, in front of the Washington Market - which was an excellent Dooses! I loved the Washington Market and wish our little local grocery store would go visit and take notes. It was the absolute perfect small town grocery store.
It rained all day Saturday, but that didn't really ruin the festival, and it probably helped keep those without tickets away from the town. I know a lot of people planned to crash the event. At one point I heard a woman walking from the parking area say "I wish I could find that woman who said we wouldn't be able to get in without tickets so I could tell her she's wrong!". Although that woman could shop at the outdoor stands and visit some of the buildings, she would not have been able to get into the cast workshops or into the main festival area - I wondered how she felt about that once she walked into town and found out that that wrist band was needed for all the festival areas.
My daughter is a huge Sean Gunn fan, so we stayed put in the main tent to see Team Kirk Cat and his cat rescue. Several cats were adopted that day, and I had to repeatedly remind my daughter that we live on a farm where people regularly drop off cats - we could NOT adopt one. Not even from Kirk. :-) If we had all stood in lines to see Sean we would have blocked all the exits, and violated the fire codes. So they released us to the line one row at a time from the seats in the tents. It was funny to hear the crowd "police" those who tried to sneak into line without waiting. There were several volunteers who kept people from line jumping as well. It took us about 2 hours of waiting, but we werre able to chat with Sean and Rini Bell and get autographs and photos. They showed a few gilmore girls clips, and everyone was chatting, it wasn't a tedious wait at all.
Shadow puppets on the big screen while waiting to see Sean Gunn
Next we went outside and saw Jackson was standing at a pop up right outside the main tent, for autographs and photos. We didn't know he would be here, so this was a nice surprise! The line wasn't too long - it was raining pretty steadily and the line had to stand in the rain with umbrellas, so we were able to get through that line pretty quick.
There was a little farmers market in town Saturday too - part of the town, not part of the festival. It was really nice!
There were more cast workshops, but the lines were sooooooo long, we didn't think we'd have any chance of actually getting through the lines before they were over. We were disappointed that we couldn't fit them all in, but it just wasn't possible, as far as we could tell.
At noon we were back in the main tent for the Eat Like a Gilmore cooking demonstration. Arvis Alverado, Ceasar, took part in the demo. We couldn't really see the table for the food "demonstration" and it was actually much more interesting to listen to Aris' Q &A. He shared all sorts of little tidbits about his time on the show, and it ended up being one of our favorite parts of the entire week-end. We did get to taste the Mocktini's made for the demo, but only a few people got a chance to taste the bruschetta and we were not one of them, even though we were just a few rows from the front.
After the food demonstration, I ran to the bookstore to buy copies of the book for us. I wish I had bought them first thing in the morning. Each book had a number, for the book signing later you lined up by number. While I picked up our books, my daughter ran to the food trucks for some lunch. She got us panini's that were quite good. We ducked back into the main tent to eat our lunch, where they were doing screenings and holding a knit a thon.
Red Heart donated lots of yarn for the knit a thon!
A view of the screening, with a talk by Costume Supervisor Valerie Campbell. She answered questions, talked about her job, and gave a demonstration on how she made sure outfits were exactly the same for each take.
I'm so glad we decided to have lunch here, at this time, because a few minutes in they asked us all to stand up and walk outside for a surprise....
A Hep Alien concert on the town hall steps!!! This was not in the program, so if you didn't happen to be nearby, or in the main tent, you probably missed it. I'm so glad we didn't miss it!!
After the concert we visited the stand in front of Washington Market (Dooses) for the cake tasting. The cake was sooooo good, as was all of the food we got from the market this week-end.
My daughter stood in line for almost 2 hours to get our Eat Like A Gilmore books signed. It was raining pretty hard by then, and it was warm and dry in the book store.. and in our car, which is where I went to recharge our phones and dry off a bit while she stood in line.
The festival even had a troubadour!
Girl With A Pearl Earring, Living Pictures
After our books were signed, we headed into town hall for Living Pictures. This is one of my favorite things, from an episode of Gilmore Girls, and I really enjoyed seeing it done here. Plus, it was a chance for us non VIPs to get into town hall and see the building, which was gorgeous!
It also gave us an opportunity to stand in front of the photo backdrop that the cast stood in front of for their arrival on the blue carpet, before the screenings.
The Dance Studio in New Preston
Then we walked back to the parking area at the school to catch a bus over to the Mayflower. When we got there, we heard that Liz Torres hadn't showed up to the early dance recitals, but she had been at one of the later ones and they thought she was still there.. so we caught that bus instead. My daughter is a HUGE Liz Torres fan, but we just couldn't track her down this week-end. We missed her in New Preston as well, she wasn't there when we got there. We did a VERY quick look at the town, and hopped back on the bus to go back to the parking lot and catch the bus to the Mayflower Inn.
The Mayflower Grace, originally a boys school but now a very nice hotel and spa, was the inspiration for the Dragonfly Inn. We were not able to go inside - possibly because a lot of the cast was staying here? They were giving out tea from the area on the far right, behind the umbrellas, and we could walk through the garden. This only took a few minutes. They were selling scones too, which we purchased, and they were SOOOOOooooo good!
Meg, with her tea from the Mayflower, and the garden in the background. It was pretty wet and cold by this time of day, the tea was really good. We had taken the very last bus to the Mayflower, so we arrived back at the school with just enough time to walk back to the main tent for the cast screening moderated by the Gilmore Guys.
It was really pretty disappointing to see this just as a video. We never even got a glimpse of the Gilmore Guys in person. If we had had a nicer hotel, I would have preferred to just go back to our hotel and watch the video online. It was a hysterical screening, LOTS of fun to watch, but being here in person was no better than watching it through a facebook live video feed, since we did not have VIP tickets and were not in the town hall. Ironically, one of the organizers commented that we could see so much better in the tent than they could in the hall. They had some trivia and give aways that we could not participate in, because we were out in the tent.
We had been so rushed all afternoon/evening trying to get to everything that we hadn't had time to eat. We were cold, tired, and hungry, so we took a chance that everyone else would head straight for the parking lot, and we instead walked to The Washington Pizza House. We had a greek pizza that was one of the best pizzas I've ever had! It was warm, the bathrooms were clean, and there were plenty of seats when we arrived. Best of all, by the time we walked to the parking area it was pretty much empty, so we were not stuck in long lines of traffic leaving town.
SUNDAY
Since our hotel was in New Milford, and the gazebo was also in New Milford, we got up early and stopped to see it on our way to the festival. It's a nice little gazebo, but we have one much more similar to the one on the show, in the small towns near us. There was a bit of a town green here though, that had a bit more of the feel of the Stars Hollow town layout.
Our plan was to grab breakfast from a food truck, but there was only one truck Sunday morning. And they didn't have coffee. We waited half an hour - still no coffee. While waiting we heard from one of the volunteers (organizers?) that the main cast members wanted to attend the festival but were unable to because Netflix would not allow then to come. I don't know if that is true or not, it's the only time we heard it.
Finally we gave up on the food truck and walked to Washington Market where we saw people walking out with coffee. Oh, how I wish we had gone there first! They had awesome breakfast options and great coffee! I bought more scones, which we had the next day at home, and they were just as good if not better than the ones we had at the Mayflower Grace. I can't say enough about how great the Washington Market is.
At 10am there were a long list of give aways. Names were chosen off the master list before we all sat down in the tent, if you were not there, they had back up names for each of the prizes. We were actually glad to NOT win most of the prizes - not because they weren't great, but because getting out of our seats in the middle row and somehow getting to the front to claim our prize would have been so difficult. We were pretty crammed into the tent, a lot of people were standing. The highlight was Rose coming in to say goodbye to all of us, and offering a few more donations for the give away. The organizer decided to raffle off the ornaments Rose's mom had made, and bidding quickly took off to over $100. The second ornament sold for $150 to a VIP who had stayed at the Mayflower Grace and met Rose in the gift shop of the hotel.
After the give aways they showed one more episode of the show on the big screen, but most people chose to head home at this point.
The day before Sean Gunn had posted an instagram photo of himself at the Woodbury Diner. Meg had heard that Woodbury was a cute little town, and it was nearby, so we headed there for lunch. We stopped at a french bakery, picked up some locally bottled birch beer at a nearby convenience store, and had a really fabulous lunch at the Woodbury diner. From there we stopped in Danbury to see the mini statue of liberty, and the female Paul Revere statue - because they felt like very Rory Gilmore essential stops - before heading home.
We had a few frustrations with the trip - horrible accommodations. Disappointment at not being able to make it to all of the cast workshops. Disappointment at not meeting Liz Torres or the Gilmore Guys, even though they were in a building right behind us. But all in all, it was an amazing week-end and I'm so glad we made the trip!
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