After a day of exploring Adelaide, we’re back in our hotel room having a glass of wine before we leave for Glenelg for dinner. We’ve been watching the news and there is a chance the Qantas airline engineers may go on strike over Easter. We’re trying to decide if that’s bad or good news! Considering the fact that I have jury duty starting Monday, I wouldn’t be crushed if we were grounded here!
Adelaide is much smaller than Sydney and Melbourne, so we pretty much covered the city in half a day. It was a planned city and the city center is inside a park that forms a ring around it. Outside the ring are the suburbs. We ended up walking through the Botanical Garden and were befriended by a lonely Australian that absolutely loves America. He appeared to be about 60 and is retired and must do volunteer work there. We were looking at a map deciding where to go when he appears out of no where and ended up giving us a tour of the place, along with telling us his whole personal history and every detail of his trip to America 20 ago. He was a very nice guy, but after a couple of hours, we had had enough of the gardens and after having a coffee with him, we finished walking around the city before coming back to the hotel.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Not only is it April Fool’s Day, it is the anniversary of our first date – 38 years ago! Hard to believe!!!
Today we got up early and walked around the Adelaide Central Market. It is another really great enclosed city market and is right behind our hotel. The fruits and vegetables, flowers, meats, and fish were beautiful. About 1/3 of the stalls in this market were like delicatessens – a lot of olives, sausages, cheeses, fresh pastas, etc. There were also numerous bakeries and I sent Kathleen some pictures of the offerings. We found a little place to have brekkie, which is what the Aussies say for breakfast. It only sat about 8 people at the counter with a few tables across an aisle, so we sat at the counter and chatted with the owner and a lady sitting by us, who told us a little history of the market. They called themselves “foodies” and started telling us about other great city markets.
We drove up to the Barossa Valley wine area which is about hour or so north of the city. We stopped at a local cheese market and a couple of other little places before going to our first winery, since we really hated to start drinking at 10:30 in the morning! We visited several wineries that we have heard of and a couple we hadn’t. Fortunately for me, Australia makes a good number of unoaked wines, so I’ve had a great time tasting this trip. This area is warmer than the other wine areas we’ve been in so Mark tried some really good Shiraz and Cabernets. An interesting fact we learned is that they indicate on the back of the bottle the number of glasses that should be poured from the bottle to stay under the legal alcohol level. For example, a wine that has 14% should have 8 glasses poured from the bottle whereas a wine that has 12% may have 6 glasses poured from the bottle. The lower the % of alcohol the larger the quantity per glass therefore fewer glasses per bottle. Most restaurants pour the same amount so I think it is just an indicator for the strength of the alcohol content when buying.
I drove back to the city and Mark made the comment to me that he might need to take a sleeping “tablet” tonight before we go to bed because he is going to be depressed tonight! I know just how he feels. This has been a wonderful trip and the time seemed to fly by. We have so many wonderful images in our minds! We feel like we are in a foreign country, but it has so many similarities to the US that we were so comfortable. Driving back from the Barossa Valley this afternoon we felt like we were on a Florida Boulevard type of street. In about a mile stretch we passed a drive thru McDonalds, KFC, Subway, and Hungry Jacks (what Burger King is called over here) as well as a Target, Babies r Us, Toys r Us, and Woolworths. We did drive behind a truck today pulling a mobile pet washing trailer. We’ve passed a number of car washes that advertise as being “Car and Dog Washes” which I think is pretty comical, but the mobile hydrobath was a first! I think Molly and Abby would love having their bath come to them verses having to go to the groomers!
We start our 28 hour trek home in the morning, so are going to go grab a quick bite and try to pack and go to bed early. We’ll try to post one more time before BR – depending on internet service.
Mark and Freda's Wanderings 