Today was the big Mardi Gras festival parade in Sydney! Unfortunately it was raining which wasn't much fun..

Hollie and I spent the morning sightseeing - we went and saw the harbour bridge and the opera house which was really cool! As we were walking away from the harbour we ran into a van giving away free ice creams if you just did some random jumping video haha, so we had free magnums! It was awesome! Although unfortunately the whole chocolate not being as nice in oz thing carries through to magnums too :(. We took the free shuttle bus to Hyde Park which was really pretty - even in the rain! We saw a church there - St Mary's maybe?- which was really nice! Funny seeing churches again! There didn't seem to be a huge amount going on so we went over to Darling Harbour to check it out and have lunch!

We had a really good lunch at a place on the waterfront - yummy chicken burgers! There was a girl playing the guitar and singing there and she had a really awesome voice, and was singing some great songs! I think we could have stayed there all day listening to her and people watching!

After a while though it was time to go to the parade! We walked back towards Hyde park and started to see people dressed up everywhere! Really never seen anything like it, some of the costumes were completely crazy! The parade was along Oxford street and there was a really long and convoluted walk to get on to it, so many people! There were stands all along the road selling plastic chairs and crates to sit on for like $10! Just so many people as well, it was crazy! We were trying to get to the VIP area because Nicholas was there but we ended up jut finding a spot that wasn't too busy and settling down for a long wait until the parade started...in the rain.

It was all a bit mad, we were getting soaked even with our umbrellas up and everyone was pushing and getting umbrellas in the face and we were rammed between really old drunk women and 18 year olds - if that! We managed to get on chairs that some Asian women beside us weren't using - they stood there for over an hour waiting, and then when the parade actually started, within 5 minutes they took their chairs back and left! Very weird!

The parade itself was pretty underwhelming! I wasn't very impressed by the floats and things, and some of the groups were downright weird to be honest - things like "Muslims for gay rights" with no Muslim-looking people marching, and a section with disabled people being pushed past...just all a bit bizarre! After a while the rain was just getting worse and it just didn't seem worth it so we decided to call it a day and head to meet Hollie's friends from work.

After a major struggle to get back through the crowds we made it back into town and went to the hostel where Julia was staying to see her. As we walked up she was walking out with a group of her friends and they walked off while she was talking to us and she lost them! We went into her hostel for a while to dry off and try and make ourselves a bit more presentable/change into our heels!

It was a horrible hostel, I've never seen anything so messy in my life! There was stuff everywhere!! Julia hadn't even managed to get a bed there, every bed in the city was booked up so she was sharing a bed with someone she had met in her other hostel - and he wasn't the only person doing that. It was not a nice place! I was glad to get out of there, and the 3 of us went to a bar called 333 where Hollie's friend was having his birthday party. It was a nice enough bar, but expensive and mega pretentious. I was really not enjoying it, the bar staff were repeatedly very rude and the clientele were not my type of people. We stayed there for a bit, Julia left pretty quickly and went to find her friends. I ended up in a pretty bad mood as I really didn't like the atmosphere in the place, and we went home reasonably early!

I had a really good day, although it went a little bit pear-shaped in the evening!