Adelaide

It poured hard all the way to Adelaide, which was such a shame as we passed and stopped in some lovely towns, such as Meningie which had a beautiful lake, Tailem Bend and Bel Air.  Boy was the latter very similar to its name sake - huge houses.  We found a lovely pricey coffee shop there - yum.

We love Adelaide.  The city makes sense.  It has wide streets, lovely parks and everything is easily accessible.  For a city - you can breath.  Nat and Maddie's plane was delayed from Brisbane so that gave us time to go straight to Frome Apartments (where we are staying for the 5 days) and get our card to access the parking garage.  Our first excursion was going to be visiting Ebenezer Night Market.  When we had researched this it said 11-4am which is why we chose Frome Apartments as we didn't want to be wandering the streets of Adelaide late into the night.   When it came to going it turned out they were from 5.30pm till 10.30pm so that was easy.  The stalls were quite unique and we really enjoyed looking around them.  For dinner we found this amazing Australian Indian restaurant called "Daughter-in-Law".  it was packed and the food was delicious - can highly recommend.

Adelaide, like so many other cities, have amazing wall murals so David and I kept whipping our cameras out every time we turned a corner, so you will get lots of those.

We woke on Sunday morning and decided to start with where I wanted to go most because it was farthest away - Himeji Gardens.  On our way down we walked through Rymill Park.  Whilst admiring the fountain there were a family of ducks which decided to take a stroll across the highway.  Fortunately it was still quite early and not very busy but cars were struggling to get around them - of course they won't stop and let the ducks do their thing.   David played hero and walked into the road and shooed them back the way they came and away from harm.  

As we walked down Hutt Road there were lots of plaques on the walls of famous racing car drivers - very different.  At the bottom of the road was a huge line of people reaching right around the corner of the side street.  We thought it must be for a signing or tickets but no . . . a bakery - I guess they must be good.

Himeji Gardens is in a corner of Peppermint Park.  It is a Japanese garden to the South of the City.  What a lovely tranquil place it was and absolutely gorgeous in the sunshine - even the turtles were basking.

We decided against taking a bus back up to the Cathedral and decided to take a slow walk as there was so much to see.  When we walked towards the St Francis Xavier's Catholic Cathedral we saw an exhibition about the Holocaust and especially the survival of some Australian jews.  They also had an Anne Frank exhibition in there as well.  Nat and Maddie wanted to go in so I went as well to collect some information for Iona and her history GCSE whilst David wandered around Victoria Square.

By this time we were all hungry.  As we wanted to go the museum and the girls wanted to do some shopping, we went to Rundle Street where most of the big malls are.  Boy was it busy.

We knew the museum was on North Terrace but could we find the entrance - it would of course have bitten us as it was huge but we did pass it twice!   David wanted to see if they had anything on the building of Adelaide in particular how the City had been originally designed and named.  He loves the layout of the City.  Unfortunately there was nothing like that in there; although we did get to find out how it was named a few days later; when we visited the botanical gardens of all places.  However they had a really good exhibit on the Pacific Islands as well as a section of Aboriginal history, which were both really interesting.

As we came out of the museum a huge demonstration was going past in support of Palestine.  Fortunately, we just caught the end of it so were able to get past quite easily as we were really tired and wanted to call it a day.  Tomorrow is a big day and one we have been looking forward to for months!

Maggie Beer's Farm and the Barossa Valley

Nat had booked us Maggie's "Indulgent Farmshop Experience" which gave us a cooking demonstation, wine tasting and lunch at the Eatery.  We were all very excited for the day.  The weather was lovely and the 1 hour drive easy.  What a lovely, quiet place her farm is.  All the staff were dressed up in 80s clothing as it was their Christmas party that evening which was quite funny.  The atmosphere in the entire place was one of fun, friendliness and good humour.  Obviously a great place to work as the staff we spoke to (which was most of them) had all been there for years. 

In our cookery class we learnt how to make some chickpea flour flatbread, labneh and eton mess - Maggie style.  It was great fun.  I personally didn't like the bread but everyone else loved it.  However the labneh was amazing and so much better than just plain yoghurt - will definitely be making that.  The meringues were gorgeous and of course used some of Maggie's products so needless to say we came away with boxfuls of goodies.

However, as you would all expect, the lunch was the best.  WOW!  Nat, Maddie and I went with for the wine pairing option whilst David went for a homemade Davidson plumb cordial as he was driving.  Sadly the cordial couldn't be purchased in the shop as was made in the restaurant - apparently it was scrummy.

After lunch we had the wine tasting and ate our "eton mess" with the dessert wine.  By this time we had forgotten to take photos.  It really was a lovely few hours.  Our favourite I think was Maggie's pear liqueur which you have with ice.  It was amazing (Karen has run out of words to describe our holiday - so she is repeating herself - Sorry!! but it has been amazing).  

As the shop didn't have any of the desert wine we liked, they suggested David Franz cellar down the road.  Unfortunately they had sold out, so more tasting to find another similar one which we bought 4 bottles as well.  The views from their cellar door were stunning.  After that we had one last stop to make before we headed home to Adelaide totally sozzled and that was Jacobs Creek cellar door.  I love their rose as do our friends in Scotland so I wanted to 'nip' in.  Unfortunately that was all we did as with everything over here it shut at 4pm.  

Our wonderful day was nearly spoilt when we got back to our apartments to find the garage door wouldn't open.  So we had fun trying to find the Wilson overnight parking garage they suggested we leave the car at until the morning.  

Glenelg and Victor Harbor

David went down to reception early to see about getting our car out of the garage.  They gave us a paid ticket and we were able to get the car out.  It cost $49 so we were quite pleased the hotel was only charging us $20.

Nat fancied seeing Glenelg and I wanted to go to Victor Harbor as it has little penguins although I knew we were unlikely to see them during the day.  They also had a horse tram which I thought might be cool to ride on along the causeway.  So off we went.  The clouds did not clear up as they had done in past days by 10am and so we actually got some rain in Glenelg.  This gave us a good excuse for second breakfast whilst we waited for the spattering of rain to stop.  It reminded me a lot of Margate.  There were some stunning old houses overlooking the beach and it had a lovely walk along the seawall in Melrose Park.  Nat and Maddie took a trip on the big wheel and then we had a giggle by sitting in the big deck-chairs.  David had great fun videoing me trying to get out so in the name of fun I have included here.

We drove down to Victor Harbor through McLaren Vale but decided not to go to any cellar doors today.  By the time we arrived in Victor Harbor the sun had come out and it was really lovely but it was 1:50 and the tram's last trip back was at 2.00 pm from the cafe on Griffith Island.  So we had to walk.  Poor Nat and Maddie spent a lot of their time waiting for us to catch up but it was a lovely walk and worth the effort.  

As I feared, no penguins but we decided we didn't want to hang around until dusk but rather to go back to the city as we needed to start packing.  Also we hadn't been rung by the apartment yet to say the garage door had been fixed.  I rang them - it had - yay.

Last day in Adelaide

We needed to have Nat and Maddie at the airport for 2.00pm.  We had to out of the apartment by 10:00 am so that meant we needed somewhere to put the car with all our stuff for 4 hours.  David and I decided we wanted to go to the botanical gardens as we hadn't managed to do so yet.  Shopping again for Nat and Maddie and we would meet them for lunch at 1pm.  Couldn't believe Wednesday had come around so quickly.

The botanical gardens were surprising.  They weren't tailored like a lot of gardens we had already seen on our trip, however that gave them their own beauty.  The thing we learnt the most about was Queen Adelaide.  I didn't even remember/know we had a Queen Adelaide.  David got the answer to his question.

So we say goodbye to Adelaide and in doing so leave you with a couple of other photos we took.

We dropped Nat and Maddie at exactly 2pm we were so impressed on our timing.  I was impressed how they managed to get everything in their suitcases and we only needed to take Maddie's new trainers - very cool.  

Now the pressure was really on as we needed to get to Mildurah for 8pm and it was over a 4 hour drive.  We made it.  We needed to be in Deliniquin the next day but we realised that the Riverland - Murray River area would definitely be a place we would like to spend more time in - next time.