Mardi Gras, Australian Style!

We’re starting to like the days when we don’t have much planned because then it means that we can sleep in a little, but not too late since we still have to get up for that free ‘breakfast.’ Being Mardi Gras people in the hostel started drinking at 9:30 in the morning which we thought was beyond ridiculous! But all is right in the world whenever it comes back to bite them in the butt and they get sick at noon. But I guess that’s the lifestyle of a backpacker at these types of hostels. We knew we had a full day ahead of us since we were both planning to move some stuff into our newfound permanent spots closer to the university! We started the day by organizing our things at the hostel and planning what to bring on the first trip. We soon realized that we had a lot more than we had originally thought. We were confident that we’d be able to bring everything to the city with two trips, but no one said they would be easy trips! First trip consisted of three suitcases, two backpacks and a full laundry bag that did not want to cooperate on top of one of the suitcases. We expected the trip to take us over an hour since we planned on taking out time but we made it our destination is about thirty minutes. By then we were hungry and ahead of schedule so we stopped for lunch at subway and Riley got his first cold Diet Coke over here, all thanks to Lauren! Needless to say, it was the best Diet Coke he had ever tasted, not to mention three dollars. Once we finally dropped our stuff off we felt a hundred pounds lighter, literally! Before we headed back to the hostel again, we stopped by the shopping centre to figure out if Riley’s phone would work. Turns out AT&T had unlocked the wrong phone for him, and he just decided to get a cheap Australian prepaid phone. We headed back to the hostel to get ready for Mardi Gras as well as cook delicious bar-be-que chicken sandwiches! Once we were ready we made another trip to the university area to meet up with some friends before the parade. The trip took us a little longer than expected since one of the roads that we are used to taking was already blocked off in preparation for the parade. We asked a Mardi Gras volunteer how to get to Broadway street and he quickly rambled off some directions, he also insisted that it would just be easier to grab a taxi. By now we have familiarized ourselves with the streets and actually had no problem following his directions and reaching Broadway Street before we knew it. Fashionably two hours late to meet our friends they were almost ready to go by the time we got there. By almost ready, that means another twenty to actually get everyone out the door and moving down the street. However, when we got to Central Station, a few people decided it would be best for everyone to take the bus even though not everyone carries a bus pass in their back pocket. We had previously looked up the directions to the parade so we were exactly where we were going and headed in that direction. By the time we got to the parade streets we realized that if we wanted to see the parades up close we would have to sneak own way through at least five rows of people. Slowly but surely we made our way and had an awesome view for the event! We did not know what to expect since this was both of ours first time at a true Mardi Gras parade. The parade lasted longer than we both thought – a whopping two hours, and was full of excitement, loud music and crazy costumes! We even have a video to prove it, which we can hopefully get posted sometime soon. Once the parade was over we should have expected that it would be crazy trying to get through all the people to find our way home, and it turned out to be even crazier than we thought. One of the police guards finally opened up the side railings that had blocked the streets during the parade so we thought we could freely walk through the streets, not being pushed by people from all sides. However, when we got to the end of the road the police guards at the other end decided that they weren’t going to open the gates yet and there was just confusion everywhere. Knowing that we just wanted to get home we headed back in the other direction to go down a side road that we had come down earlier. Our trip back to the hostel was a lot easier than we had expected thanks to our keen sense of direction! Of course we could not end the night without getting a McDonalds ice cream cone! And boy, were they delicious. It was also the last night in the hostel which was exciting!