Mardi Gras, Sydney Style

The big celebration for fat Tuesday here in Sydney revolved around one of the world's biggest ships, the Queen Mary 2. A few years ago, I could have just said world's largest passenger ship, but the folks at the Royal Caribbean got to building a bigger cruise liner. Still, having the world's longest, widest and tallest passenger ship in port was enough to throw a wrench into Sydney's workings, basically cloging up all the roads in the city center. When the ship came into port, both the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the ANZAC bridge were closed.

I spent my day oblivious to all the fuss, working on website design as I tend to do here. It took a thirty minute barrage of fireworks for me to make it to the roof to check out this whole big boat invasion. From my roof I could see that it was one expletive inducing massive boat. It was time to get the camera and take a trip down the hill to Woollomoolo (my favorite Aussie word so far).

The boat:

Fun with my new lens I got for Christmas:

The tradition here in Sydney is to continue to celebrate Mardi Gras throughout the duration of Lent. I think that is cheating on the holiday calendar somehow, sort of like celebrating the New Years Day throughout the entire month of January and a bit into Feburary. The big Mardi Gras parade is on March 3, which would technically make it a Samedi Gras parade. Sigh. When in Rome. More on Gras Lent to come...