All my mom thinks I do in Oz is drink and have fun. Not true! but last weekend it was....

Friday night drinks are the closest thing to a secular religion in Sydney, and it's a ritual that's important for my professional development. Friday drinks before Mardi Gras weekend was just the start of a great time.

Mardi Gras is the big, huge and I mean massive Gay Pride parade in Sydney. The entire length of Oxford Street is lined with people for this parade, and an amazing number of people prepare for this parade to last all weekend long. Almira and her sister Jobina have their parents in town, so Mardi Gras was quite the experience for the Bardai family. They located a view spot right in front of the "Glam Stands" the VIP viewing area with free flowing food, champagne, and seats in all the colours of the rainbow. I joined one of our friend's here, Matt, who is a DJ, who was doing a gig at the top of Oxford St. in Taylor Square in the T2 hotel - spitting distance from the jumbo-tron screen, and ground zero for par-tay.

Love the perks - I got to be 'with the DJ' and had free drinks, food, whistles, flags, Tupperware maracas, confetti, streamers and a lot of drunken entertainment. Only at a Gay party is the free cocktail on offer a lychee and lime mohito. I can get used to this. This parade is positively astounding. Starting at 7:30pm, it takes almost 3 hours to pass you, and for the hooting and hollering you do at the start, by the time the last float goes by you can barely croak.
And the parade is impressive - from campy to fabulous, cheesy, political, thrown together, over-the-top entertainment. (can I tell you home many cowboys and Brokeback Mountain take offs there were?) Part of the huge draw of Mardi Gras (other than the parade, and the hundreds of kids, teenagers and everyone else dressed outlandishly and having a fantastic time) is the legendary after parties. After the parade passes, you can join the parade route and follow the crowd to the after party - and that's only the beginning.

Now that the parade itself has passed, Oxford Street looks like it's been hit with a litter tornado. Every hotel, bar, restaurant, lounge, clothing store is open, and having an impromptu party (including people just sitting in circles on milk crates in the middle of the parade route to party until the cops kick them out.) The Official Mardi Gras after party ($70 a ticket, 18,000 people) rages all night, until Toy Box, the after-after party that was at the Luna Park amusement park, starting sometime on Sunday morning, and then there is the after, after-after party DTM starts sometime on Sunday afternoon. You need chemical support to survive that kind of party-hard. I know a few Sydney-siders who spent their Sunday just watching the carnage in Paddington and Darlinghurst.

Instead of watching the party aftermath on Sunday, with Almira's parents in town, we took the opportunity to do a day trip to the Hunter Valley - a beautiful wine region just over an hour and a half from Sydney. Talk about a great day - we bought fresh figs on the side of the road, tasted some lovely Aussie wines and ports, and rounded out the afternoon with olive and cheese tastings. I have never seen Mr. Bardai drive so fast as when Almira was dying to get to one last winery before they closed of the evening, peddle to the metal, she wanted to get to the church on time! (It was closed. Funnily enough, the winery we were aiming for, happened to have it's tasting room in an old church.)