Oh My!

The Sydney Winter Festival was held 18-21 June, 2009. I went on the last day (Sunday 21st). My sister invited me to come along with her (I must’ve been living under a rock because I hadn’t even heard about it) as she wanted to reminisce about going to European winter/Christmas festivals…

I had an awesome time at the Sydney Winter Festival. Judging by the crowds, it was a roaring success! Unfortunately I was very ill-prepared.. how stupid of me to think that it’d be cold! It turned out to be about 18ºC (and looking at the photos, you’d never know this if I didn’t tell you )

I went with my sister and her boyfriend for lunch (around 1pm) and it was really warm. I was wearing way too many layers of clothes! And it was so ridiculously packed which kinda made it not as fun as it took forever to get the food. You had to buy ’snowflake’ tokens first before you could buy the food but then it turned out most of the food vendors accepted cash anyway. D’oh! I think the organizers really underestimated the turnout! It was huge!

The ice rink was a little disappointing and many people commented on how small it was. All the tickets had to be bought prior and given I was carrying so much camera gear I was very content to just watch. It had a very New York feel about it. It was so cool! Except the funny part was that nobody knew how to ice skate! I mean no one! It was kind of amusing watching everyone being so fearful and falling over… (chuckle).

I then went to Freedom furniture with my sister (she/they wanted to buy a rug), Abbey’s bookstore and Kinokuniya (book sale!!!) then I went back to the site, now carrying about 8kg of stuff (camera stuff, tripod, and books I bought) and sweating because I was wearing a winter jacket and scarf. My shoulders are still killing me but the photos are worth it

Oh but it gets even better! It had now started to rain and I found it quite annoying and amusing at the same time trying to juggle all my stuff, whilst trying to set up the tripod, take photos, and hold an umbrella. Luckily the rain didn’t last that long. It is funny because in the photos it looks like it’s snowing (there was a machine blowing out something that looked like detergent/bubbles) but it was actually quite warm (probably 15º the second time I went back).

Yummy food and wine was to be had there!

I also got a snowman gingerbread man ($4)

My sister got some yummy choc-covered bananas and strawberries on a skewer ($6)

Some of the food was a little on the expensive side.. like $10 for the tiniest burger I’d ever seen, and $14 for a small plate of paella!

Day

Night

If it’s on again I highly recommend going although they might need to pick a bigger spot to hold it!

Gosh I love the 5D.. I love it’s full-frame goodness… (some of the photos here are taken with my G9 though). I hate the weight of the 5D. My sister held it for 2 seconds and exclaimed, “It’s so heavy!” I laughed and said, “You’ve only held it for 2 seconds. I was carrying it around for 5 hours the other night!”

More photos on my Flickr, here.