Vivid Sydney

As “the largest light and music festival in the Southern hemisphere,” you can be sure this was on our list of things to do while I was in Sydney!! So my last night at home, we finally got down to check it out. Although there are a lot of different facets to this festival, one of the main things was “Smart Light Sydney”. Basically, artists set up their “light art” installations along the harbour. They range from a light in a tree shining down on to a bench:
Ben as art

to projecting images onto the Opera House:


It really reminded us of going to see a festival of lights display at Christmas-time in the US – lots of families and couples coming to check out the lights, all rugged-up since it was a cool night. There were street vendors out along the route, one person doing a unicycle act, others playing music/singing. Just a good happy feeling.
And since we were down there and this was partly a festival of music, we decided we should see a show at the Opera House, so we finally made it inside!

Impressive, isn’t it?!?! OK, so this isn’t the main big concert hall – this was a little playhouse in one of the side-wings. I don’t even know how many theatres they have, but there are several. So we saw Reggie Watts, and he is absolutely incredible. He has a 10-octave voice range, can flip-flop between musical genres like it’s nothing, can create amazing songs on the spot with his loop machine, and he inserts this hilarious social commentary throughout the show to top it all off. It was a great evening, topped off with a delicious sticky toffee pudding (you knew I had to get food in there somewhere).