Sydney’s Winter Festival sets up in front of St Mary’s Cathedral

Winter Festival has kicked off this month, and will be running until the 17th July outside of its usual St Mary Cathedral spot in Sydney’s CBD. The festival offers up a stack of fun activities embracing the winter chill including an ice skating rink complete with cute little ‘penguin aids’, munich bier pop-up, european food market and winter forest.

To celebrate, the festival hosted a special VIP event on Wednesday opening up the freshly laid ice skating rink to a hoard of excited guests. Small and big kids gleefully reveled, or in some cases clutched their penguin aids in sheer panic as continual bursts of man-made snow magically drifted overhead. The rink was cleared periodically to make way for professional skating entertainment to the beat of the Frozen soundtrack (and yes Olaf did make an appearance).

20160629192734

20160629191231

Munich Brauhaus Bier tent served up hearty canapes, a selection of imported biers and cockle warming spiced mulled wine and cider under a beautifully ornate blue, white and silver canopy. A velvety furred and increasingly adorable husky stole the show as it sat patiently on a large red sleigh, waiting for photos and cuddles.

20160629190936

20160629191844

20160629191951

20160629191013

Comprised of six stalls a European food market has been put together to replenish patron’s post skate calorie burn. The German Sausage Hut dishes up traditional fare such as Thuringer Rostbratwurst (uniquely spiced with nutmeg and lemon), Debreciner (beech wood smoked with paprika) and Cheese Kranskys in a flakey roll with tangy sauerkraut and mustard. Firm favourites Tornado Potato make an appearance with their curled potato on a stick as well as Turkish Gozleme. For that sweet finish The Fudge Shop’s Jovana and Ferdinand will be serving their decadent cookies and cream and chocolate hazelnut fudge (amongst other flavours), popcorn and fairy floss.

20160629194142

20160629193437

In the same vein as this year’s Vivid light cathedral the Winter Forest has been set up for folks take the odd selfie and gawk in awe as they wander through. Other activities not necessarily affixed to the St Mary’s site which will be made available include the private hire of five 10 person igloos for corporate or other functions, giant inflatable slide, tobogganing and powder pit (hours of snowman building, snow ball hurling fun).

20160629193341

Winter Festival will run for the next couple of weeks in Sydney, Fremantle, Brisbane and Canberra, for more information please visit http://winterfestival.com.au/.

———-

This content has recently been ported from its original home on The AU Review: Food & Lifestyle and may have formatting errors – images may not be showing up, or duplicated, and galleries may not be working. We are slowly fixing these issue. If you spot any major malfunctions making it impossible to read the content, however, please let us know at editor AT theaureview.com.