St. Patricks – a beauty weekend

We attempted to celebrate St. Patricks by doing our own exclusive pub crawl… unfortunately for us, everyone else had already bribed the bouncers, and we weren’t getting in anywhere. OK. We were getting in some places, but we were staggered by the round-the-corner lines for every pub. Half of Ireland is living in Sydney, and they were all determined to drink for the rest who weren’t with them – it was quite the sight!

To work off the over-consumption and Irish-ness of the night before, the next morning I attempted to beat out the alcohol in a thorough drubbing of surfing lessons. I always forget that after a couple hours of fighting surf, your mouth tastes like you have been chewing on a salt lick…eeeuw. My flatmate met me for a gorgeous walk along the coast from Bondi to Maroubra Beach – it’s about a 2 and a half hour walk, through some of the most spectacular sandstone cliff faces. We’ve done the walk from Bondi to Coogee with just about everyone that’s visited us, but the extra 40 minute walk to Maroubra is the best part. …and we ruined it with a great big chocolate milkshake…mmmm

One of the things I love about this country, is the slightly more relaxed view on public drinking. You can bring your own bottle of wine to the open air cinema, you can have champers in the park with your picnic, you can have a beer while you play your footy. No need to get slaughtered, just a nice tipple in the afternoon. The structured beer gardens of Canada are just so… puritan in comparison. I will admit there’s more public drunkenness, but on the whole people are well behaved and just looking to enjoy themselves. It was such a treat on Sunday to be walking downtown and stumble on the St. Pat’s festival going off in a park in the centre of Sydney. There were families and friends, Irish and everyone, having a Guiness in the park while they tapped their feet to a celtic jig. There were fences to keep people from falling into traffic, but you were able to roam free over the whole festival – take your beer to the Himalayan food tent (of course! At the Irish festival…) and get your dumplings, swig your lager at the stage and trade cheers amongst the families picnicking on the grass. Now, in some places it looked like a college keg party at 2pm, but as long as you swilled down the last of your stout before you left the confines of the festival grounds, no worries – and no beer corral necessary. Why in a country where we pride ourselves on being dull peacekeepers can we not trust each other to drink a civilized beer at the dragon boating festival? Sigh…