brick and kite easter saturday

Today's been a very busy day... filled with walking and looking and photographing.

It all started out fairly ordinarily... I got ready and got to the bottom of the stairs when Ma appeared around the corner. We headed off to the supermarket and did a reasonably quick shopping trip... a combination of neither of us needing that much stuff and wanting to make sure that we had enough time to get to the Convention Centre.

We even managed to sneak in a short look around Target so I could look for some new dress pants since I somehow got a giant rip in the inner thigh of my current ones this week. Sadly they didn't have much on offer, so I'll take a look in the city next week, or have another look next weekend.

After the usual unpacking, we headed off to the Convention Centre, found a park by the Parade Grounds and walked along the Torrens to Brick-a-laide.

Thankfully unlike last year's Bricktopia, everything this year was inside, including the spot for waiting to go into the exhibition... although weirdly, no actual queue... just a large open area for people to sit around on the floor in (they really could have done with some more chairs).

I think possibly next year, if it's on the Easter weekend again, we may need to go on the Friday... or if we do go on Saturday, we actually go to the very first session and do the shopping later.

It was just insanely crowded, even more so than Bricktopia was, and much, much more so than the Sydney Brick Show. And I know that the primary audience is kids, and all of the displays are down at a height for kids to be able to see them, but just the fact that they stick their heads clear into the displays and don't move, or are completely spatially unaware, was a little frustrating.

And at a certain point I realised that I actually wasn't really in the moment... I was viewing everything through the camera and not really seeing it properly. But then it was also kind of hard to see a lot of things due to the sheer crush of people.

Also due to the lighting in the Convention Centre plus the fact that I was using my telephoto lens to even be able to get anywhere near some of the models, a bunch of the photos I took ended up a little bit soft.

One of the seemingly unofficial mascots for Brick-a-laide were these Lego sheep... they seemed to be everywhere, not least of all in this big display of dozens and dozens of them, even if most of them were these weird yellow zombie sheep.

There were a lot of cool displays, although a bunch of them were things that were at Bricktopia last year.

Among my favourites were the two Hobbit displays (Laketown and the Barrel Escape), the giant red bridge complete with lights and the airport setup. Oh and a number of the brick portrait pieces, particularly Wonder Woman.

All things considered, it was a pretty good venue, although for some reason I kind of expected there to be more displays... and I'm not sure if there was any possible layout that would have allowed for a better flow of people... because, well, people.

When we'd done all of the main area, we wandered into the secondary area which held all the retail stalls. There was also a little stand selling Brick-a-laide printed bricks with the name and date and whatnot on them... and I could resist getting one.

The other thing I couldn't resist was the life size version of the Lego mug that was released a couple of weeks back. And getting one from Brick-a-laide saved me at least $10 on what it would have been if I'd ordered one from the Lego website.

We called it quits at about that point... we stopped off for something to drink and then headed off... doing our best to avoid the bogan, racist, xenophobic parade of morons that was leaving the banks of the Torrens at the same time we were leaving the Convention Centre.

Since we didn't have any other plans for the rest of the day... and it looked like avoiding the city was the better option, we figured we might as well head down to Semaphore and check out the kite exhibition.

We weren't expecting a lot, since there didn't seem to be any wind, but once we got down to the beach there was actually a decent display on.

One of the interesting things this year though was that we just happened to be there at the same time that the announcer guy was talking to one of the kite flyers, Robert Brasington, who also happened to have a ton of kites up in the air (and given what I now know, he's usually had the kites we really liked each year as well).

Specifically, the ones in the photos above, but also the one at the very top of the post, as well as the other mosaic ones above (and the bird-like kite below). He seriously does a good kite. And it turns out that my Angel's Play kite is by him as well.

Even so, we didn't stick around too long... there was only so much stuff to photograph, and since we were there later than we've been in previous years, the place was packed with people. Plus, I didn't have a hat with me, and the morning which had started out very grey and overcast had become decidedly sunny.

So we headed over to the Palais Hotel to grab some lunch.

And I will say that they do a decent chicken schnitzel at the Palais.

But that was pretty much it... after lunch we had another quick look at the kites and then headed back here and called it a day.

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