Life in Adelaide

16012010

In our quest to find our favorite city we spent all of a week in Adelaide.  Despite being very well-organized and easily navigable, the city itself is not home, at least not for the long haul.  Adelaide is by far more active and exciting than Perth and seems to have a bigger focus on sports and festivals/theater.  We went to out first Aussie cricket 20/20 game which was quite confusing but once we figured it out it was very fun.  There is also the Tour Down under with Lance Armstrong racing through the city all this week and next week.  We spent some time in the surprisingly bustling city center looking in shops, watching street performers, checking hostel notice boards for work and getting some admin things accomplished.  One night we ventured out to the Brighton Jetty for some squid fishing and I caught 2 pretty big ones, we had a feast that night.  We spent another day at Glenelg Beach which is a busy and teenager infested beach with lots of litter and people.  Yesterday we took off to the Adelaide Hills to the town of Handorf which is a small German themed settlement, where we bought some German sausages for dinner and walked around the coo-coo clock maker, Birkenstocks and German Stein shops.  We even found a can of Dr. Pepper, a little piece of home.  We took a drive to the Warrawong Animal Sanctuary, because it has free admission and wondered around looking for the koala.  I spotted it first up high in the tree taking nap, but Jeff had trouble seeing it because he needs glasses I think.  We also petted a white kangaroo and saw a bandicoot, but no platypus.  Other than spending our first night in a motel after a rough week in the unforgiving heat, we found a place to stay 5 minutes from the city with this guy named David who rents out rooms in his home to tourists on a short-term basis, sort of like a small-scale hostel.  We’ve enjoyed the luxuries of a house, but it’s time to continue our quest.  Wer cannot find any farm work in this area and don’t want to stay in the city so tomorrow morning we head towards Mount Gambier and then eventually to Melbourne with some stops in the Grampians and Great Ocean Road.