Ah, the Pageant!

*Melissa*

With the windshield wipers going full-on, we drove along the beach back in to town. It wasn’t hard to spot the collection of cars, and spot the goofy looking characters marching along the streets. We parked, and quickly made our way over to watch the pageant.

“Pageant” here in Australia is a fancy word for parade. Not kiddos on a stage singing songs or performing renditions of Shakespeare, or beauties trying (usually unsuccessfully) to prove that they are more than a pretty face. Just a good old fashioned parade with a marching band, decorated floats, people throwing candy to the little ones, and even the fire-truck tooting its horn. Yes, all in the pouring rain. It was fantastic!

It made me feel all warm and fuzzy to see the festivities – everyone smiling, dressed in soaking wet penguin costumes, and prancing around in elf outfits. My favorite was the 60-year-old marching bandleader who kept stopping and stomping in the rain puddles to splash the players behind him in time to the music. And what parade would be complete without a waving Santa at the end of the line? they need more Christmas parades back home!

All warm and fuzzy – and a bit homesick – on the inside, and cool as a frozen cucumber on the outside, we sped back to the comfort of our cozy hotel bed and lucked out to find an amazingly intriguing movie on TV. But our luck didn’t stop there. Just as we got to the crux of an intriguing movie we discovered on TV, everything went black, followed by the familiar whir of dying electricity. It was silent. And Dark. And it lasted for over an hour, causing us to miss the end of our movie.

So, there we were: No snorkeling, No penguins, and not even the pleasure of finishing a good movie. Not a single tan line to show for our weekend getaway!

On the way home, we visited the lovely – but utterly small and relatively empty – McLaren Vale, and topped off our trip with Mission Impossible 4 in V-Max. Quite a different lot than we had planned for!! With Christmas just around the corner, maybe fate is just saving up the good stuff for the holiday weekend!!