Ciarán & Elaine's Travelog

Monday, March 05, 2007

March In Sydney

March in Sydney got off to a great start with the Mardi Gras. A huge parade of glitz, glamour and lip gloss - and thats just the men!

We saw some sights we could have done without seeing - middle aged men wearing chaps and not much else is not something you want to see, or something you can forget too fast either!

The atmosphere in Hyde Park was electric. The place was packed - a much bigger celebration than we'd seen for Australia Day. There were 6'5" drag queens everywhere who were more than willing to pose for photos, a big Kylie Minogue float and bizarrely a police band going by on a float playing Aretha Franklins R.E.S.P.E.C.T.! Maybe they should be known as the boys in pink instead of the boys in blue!

After that came St. Patrick's Day. The parade was on the weekend before (there were 75th birthday celebrations for the Harbour Bridge on the weekend of the 17th) but we didn't quite manage to get into town to see it. It was a scorcher of a day and Bondi Beach was calling us so we skipped the parade but made up for it on the day itself. We went to the Cock n Bull at about 11am and had a huge breakfast washed down by a pint of black slop in a plastic glass they were trying to pass off as Guinness - ah well you can't have it all. We stayed in the Cock n Bull most of the day. There were great trad bands on all day and by mid afternoon there was many a sloppy person.

We went into town later on to try and get into PJ O'Briens but the queue was around the corner, so back to the Cock n Bull it was. We watched a hard fought win against the Italians in the 6 Nations and we went home thinking Ireland had won! We were pretty disappointed the next day to find out the French had spoiled the party.

After the excess of Paddy's Day we decided it was time to be a bit more sophisticated. We went to see Macbeth in the Opera House. We got dressed up, had a pre-show drink in the Opera Bar and went in. It was my first time seeing Macbeth and I loved it - the performance was brilliant.
Afterwards we went to the Shangri La Hotel. They have a bar on the 40thfloor and the nighttime views of the city form up there were amazing.

Apart from that we've been loving "The Spot" in Randwick to take in a film in a nice old cinema followed by by dinner in one of the many great restaurants there, the whole area has a great atmosphere.

For one of our last evenings in Sydney we decided to have a nice night out in Icebergs at Bondi Beach (really really posh bar sitting right on the water) followed by a walk on the beach. Clear skies, crashing waves, soft sand - a perfect night. We're really, really going to miss Bondi so much....

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