March 5

After a night on the town in Sydney, we slept in. When we finally got up, we walked down to Harry's Pie Shop, which is famous in Sydney for delicious Meat Pies! I ordered a beef pie with mashed peas on top! Yumm.

We tried walking to Darling Harbour, but I got a text from my classmate that the Mardi Gras Parade was starting earlier than expected. So, we freaked out a little bit and headed back to our hostel before realizing that we still had lots of time. So, we rested and then took our time getting ready. We chugged some beer before leaving and then around 5pm, we walked to a spot near Oxford St for our view of the parade. Here's Jillian in costume!

Here's all of us, waiting on the sidelines:

We waited amongst a group of older people, an old Spanish lady, and a group of deaf people. The Spanish lady kept coming in and out of the front row because her back hurt to stand for long periods of time. We tolerated it and saved her spot for her, but were still a bit annoyed she would get this privilege. I think us Americans were too loud for the hard-of-hearing people because they spent some of it, covering their ears.

Some 3 hours later, the parade started and it was a jumble of color and nudity and diversity and beauty!! Fabulous floats and costumes and synchronized dances, awesome music!

After the parade, people poured into the streets and we walked toward Oxford to find a bar or something. But every bar was already full, so we decided to eat instead. We had to get up early the next morning, so we headed home after that and were in bed by about 12:30am.
Here's a photo of me: