Sydney Winter Festival

Every year, the Alpine Winter Festival comes to town. An ice rink appears outside St Mary’s Cathedral, along with a marquee with open log fires and bear rugs and sleighs to sit on, and all manner of stalls selling winter comfort foods and drinks. There’s pretzels and mulled wine and crepes and jacket potatoes and pork sausages with sauerkraut, and mini Danish pancakes and the list of calories goes on. 

My old friend Kat and I (old as in we’ve been friends for a long time, not in that she IS actually old. Although, come to think of it…*sniggers*) decided to head down after work this week to check it out. If you’re in Sydney and fancy a couple of hours lounging around doing not very much, check it out! We didn’t ice skate (I’m the most uncoordinated person I know, plus I have an irrational fear that I’m going to fall over and someone will skate over my hands, thereby severing my fingers off), but we enjoyed watching everyone else making fools of themselves.

Of course, there’s always those one or two in the crowd that can actually skate properly. These are the types that like to show off their pirouettes and turns and fancy moves. They're also likely to receive withering looks from everyone else (the large majority trying to simply move forward on the ice without falling on their asses.) But whatevs. I say, bet they can’t eat a packet of Pringles in under 3 minutes like me. Its all about life skills.

They even had ice hockey demonstrations, which leads me to Irrational Fear Number Two: that a puck will come flying in my direction, hit me square in the face, and cause either severe cranial injuries or an impressive black eye. Or both. I kept my distance, don’t you worry.

It was all very wintry but the mulled wine keeps you warm. Do eat a pretzel while you’re there – those bad boys were good.