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24th August 2009
Thursday night I flew down to Adelaide for my long weekend visiting Shell (an old friend from mini club at home) she has been working in Oz for over 2 years now so it was really good to catch up. On Friday I made my way around the city by myself, like a right proper tourist with a map and my camera out. The best way I can describe Adelaide is to compare it to Bristol. It is definitely the most English-like part of Australia I have been to so far and there was something really familiar about the city. Lots of old buildings, churches and all the houses are made of brick! Unlike the timber ones of Queensland that get freeeeezing cold at night since they have no insulation or heating system, but I guess they don’t need it most of the year. I went to the museum, art gallery, library (where I could have searched my family history, they even had back catalogues of The Times from the UK going well back into the 1800’s), migration museum – the only one in Australia – and to a cathedral in the city. After that I had most of the afternoon left so ended up shopping, although mostly window shopping. South Australia also has the best chocolate I have found in Australia yet, called Haigh’s. Cadbury’s just isn’t the same here unfortunately. Friday evening Shell met me in the city with some of her friends, it was one of their birthdays, and we went for a few drinks. We were good though knowing the last thing we wanted for Saturday was a hangover so it was just a friendly and quiet night.
On Saturday we headed off to the Barossa Valley for the Gourmet Food and Wine Festival in a mini bus filled with women, a lot of whom I had met the previous night. They were all really friendly and we went to four different wineries, each with their own wines and a different selection of food and live music. All the scenery on the way there and back reminded me of home, with the rolling green hills and fields and lots of trees. Unfortunately it rained for a lot of the day (reminding me of sunny England also) but a lot of it we could go under cover and it was a great day nonetheless. When we got back into Adelaide the drinking antics continued well into the early hours with many a hangover being suffered the next day – but not me hurrah! I was very bemused when we made our way back Saturday night to find out that South Australians don’t call them kebabs, but yiros which comes from the Greek word for them.
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