Sydney Trip

It seems I am getting to the point in the semester where I have paper after paper due which means I will probably be writing less and less on the blog.
I two weekends ago I went to Byron Bay which is about a hour south of the gold coast. It was a small hippy town. Most of the stores sold hemp clothing. We stayed at the arts factory which is a little hostel just outside of town. They had gigantic tepees that you could stay in instead of rooms. We got to surf and enjoy some of the night life the city has to offer.
Last weekend, I went down to Sydney for Mardi Gras. Sydney is really a cool city. It makes me wish that I had studied there instead of here. It was surprisingly cheaper down there than it is on the gold coast. Taxis were much cheaper anyway. The city was big but not too big like New York City.
We tried to go on a city tour the first day but missed the group so we decided to go explore ourselves. We walked around the botanical gardens and saw the opera house. The Sydney harbor bridge is right next to the opera house so we caught a peek at that too. They had street performers in that area so we watched a contortionist fit inside a box and some Japanese jump rope. The jump roping was insane. Those were the best dance moves I have seen since ABDC. We got to Oxford street early to see the parade.
I didn't realize this but Mardi Gras here is the largest gay celebration on the planet. I have never been to a gay pride parade so it was quite a new experience. Everyone was just so happy about everything and really friendly. There were lots of drag queens and lots of people dressed up. The straight people really got into dressing up as well. The parade lasted 3 hours but we only stayed for 2 because it started to rain. I managed to somehow lose my wallet on the way back home that night.
The last day we went to the Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife sanctuary. They were right next to each other. I was able to see sharks at the aquarium which is something I wanted to see while here. I still haven't seen a platypus or Tasmanian devil which is something I need to do before I leave. Most of the animals I saw at these places I had seen already but it was still nice to see kolas and kangaroos again. We went to the top of the Sydney tower to see the view and that was basically the last thing we did before catching a flight home. It was the best weekend I have had here so far.