Take me to the Mardi Gras

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And so we finally make it to Sydney for Mardi Gras and we find out that this City certainly knows how to party. The celebrations had been going on for over a month culminating with the spectacular parade that shuts down a large section of the City to traffic and sees tens of thousands of take to the streets in good natured celebration of equality and diversity.

Although the parade does not take place until the evening, people begin gathering along the route many hours in advance in order the best possible viewpoint. And so it was for us. We arrived in Oxford Street late morning so we could enjoy the building atmosphere and too meet friends from New Zealand for lunch and to secure our vantage point for the parade.

We noticed the crowds beginning to build so decided to purchase our plastic stools from a street vendor and take up our position in good time. As it turned we were there about four hours prior to the start of the parade. We passed our time by talking to others in the crowd and the very attractive and helpful event volunteers.

At 7:45 pm the parade finally got underway with array of motorcycles ridden by people in all sorts of costumes portraying all sorts of groups and interests. Followed by hundreds of colourful floats and displays sometimes a little risqué, but nobody minds because it's Mardi Gras.

The parade took over two and one half hours to pass us and we enjoyed every minute of it despite several heavy bursts of rain. It wasn't going to rain on our parade!

We made our way back home through the crowd maybe a little damp but our spirits weren't.

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Comments

[John Walker]

I think that you both look very dashing in your costumes in pic 3!! Have fun.