We flew into Sydney and unbeknownst to us it was LGBT Mardi Gras! All of the hostels and hotels in the city were pretty much packed ot the rafters so we had to stay in some flea pit near Chinatown. Needless to say Elaine wasn't very impressed with it (neither was I for that matter) and coupled with the fact that we we're both feeling a bit ill from our last night in Fiji; not what you think, Elaine had an insect bite and I got a dodgy belly from some spaghetti bolognese...

Saying that though, the rank conditions of our hostel forced us out onto the streets and we made our way to where the Mardi Gras parade was kicking off. There were tonnes of folk there for some gay pride — men dressed as women, women dressed as men, men and women not dressed at all. It was pretty cool to see and the whole vibe was great, up to a point. There were a lot of folks out that went a bit too far with the drinking and we saw a few casualties by the relatively early time of 10pm.

Maybe we caught Sydney at the wrong time, or maybe it was a combination of our surroundings and feeling poorly, but we didn't really like the city too much and moved onto Melbourne pretty quickly — more on that soon!

Photos on Flickr