Adelaide

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Whenever I hear the name Adelaide I can’t stop thinking of Adams which obviously takes my brain to Calamity Jane (Adelaide Adams) and then I can’t stop Singing ‘Oh the dead wood stage is a coming on over the hill, whip crack away whip crack away whip crack awayyy’ and ‘I’ve just flown in from the Windy City, the Windy City is mighty pretty but it ain’t got what we’ve got’.
Now Adelaide is nothing like Dead Wood, It’s culturally diverse, beautiful and a big city.
After spending the first day charging our electronics and doing boring internet stuff, we were ready for a beach day. Our first proper time on an Australian beach. We get up and dress in swim wear, pack our towels and start the drive. And yes you’ve guessed it, it starts raining!
After looking at the weather and realising it was the worst day for the beach we could have chosen we found a free car park and decided to just walk around Adelaide. We walked through parts of the city we probably wouldn’t have seen. And had a lovely stroll through China town reminiscing about the past year we had spent in China and all the yummy food we had there. We couldn’t resist getting ourselves a steamed bun.
The next day, after checking the weather, it was finally beach day. Once we arrived at the beach we had a little picnic on the grass area then with our chairs and kindles went to the beach. There were two car parks where parking was only free for three hours, luckily you could return to the car park in the same day. I had to move the car three times! That’s how long we stayed at the beach. We enjoyed dinner as the sun set behind the ocean and it was beautiful.
After getting the train in to Adelaide and watching some street performers we headed to St Paul’s Cathedral. The foundation stone of this Cathedral was placed on 29th June 1869, which is also St Peters day, and is now two meters below the current floor. Services began here in 1877.
Westminster Abby in London is also dedicated St Peter and in 1966 to mark its 900th birthday the Abby gave some of its stones to all cathedrals in the British Empire. We saw the stone on our visit.
After the Cathedral we went to the Oval, Adelaide’s Cricket Pitch. We had read you could walk around and there was a small museum and shop. Once we arrived at the oval we couldn’t find any signs showing us the way to the entrance. We found an open door and walked in, this apparently wasn’t the way in and we had gone through a workers gate. However no one commented on this or us being there and if we had wanted to we could have walked on to the pitch. We walked around and finally found the correct entrance, which we left through.
Near the Oval was Adelaide’s River which has a lovely river side walk. We walked down one side, crossed over the damn bridge then walked back up the other where we stopped to watch the Adelaide rowing club in the river. It was beautiful, it reminded me of the British T.V. show Lewis, luckily without the murders.
The day before I’d been looking at an online post about the top Instagram places in Adelaide. One was a café. After finding where it was we took the free tram half way and then walked the rest. The café was called 50sixone and is a dessert bar. I was in heaven. Instead of having a full desert I opted for a brownie milkshake. It was a chocolate brownie milkshake with a big slice of brownie on top with milk and white chocolate sauce! Delicious.
The past few nights we had been staying in a train station car park. The signs around the car park said if you are using the train you can park here. We were using the train and the closest free campsite was over 60km away. I didn’t want to drive 120km every day. Not long after we’d gotten back to the van a lady knocked on the door. She was car park security and Laurent and I thought we’d have to move that night while in our pj’s. Luckily the lady was very friendly and said she was happy to let us sleep there again that night but tomorrow night we would have to move on. The lady was lovely and told us of another train station car park where we could spend the next night.
The next day was chocolate factory tour day! I woke up early and letting Laurent sleep went to the local laundrette to get some washing done. It took me about an hour and a half and when I got back to the van found another security lady talking to Laurent about our trip. She didn’t say we couldn’t stay another night but she said we had to move the van, suggesting just moving it to a different spot in the car park so it looked like we had used it. We explained that when we got back later that night we had already planned to move on.
After getting the train in to the city I went and collected my glasses. Yes I had to get new glasses whilst in Australia. I lost my old ones in Kings Canyon the first time we went, they were in fact still there when we went back five months later but broken and glass missing. After collecting my glasses we headed to the chocolate factory. The tour it’s self was in the factory the company have used since it was established in 1915, it’s just a bit bigger now. Haigh’s chocolates is a family run business and is now in its fourth generation. The brothers who are currently CEO’s started working in the factory and worked their way up, even though at the time their father was the CEO, they wanted to understand how the company worked from every angle.
A few years ago their chocolate won an award and is now world class.
Whilst at the factory we saw the chocolates being coated, wrapped and boxed. The last two are all done by hand.
We had lots of tasters on the tour and afterwards while looking around the shop. The chocolate really was good!
That afternoon we made our way to the central market, which was huge! We got some squid and octopus for lunch and then looked around the stalls. The Australian version of Master Chef was filming there which unfortunately meant that some of the stalls were shut.
We found some unusual fruit on some of the stalls, Christmas Melon and Prickly Pears being the two we bought.
We decided to try one of the pears. Did you know that Prickly Pears are part of the cactus family? No nor did I until trying one. The name is prickly pear but we assumed the prickles were the big ones on the outside. Not the tiny prickles that you can’t see. After finishing our pear we found thousands of prickles in our hands and for Laurent around his mouth as well. After trying to pick them out we googled ‘Help I have pear prickles in me’ to find that you can only see a very small percentage of the prickles and that the best way to get rid of them is to use tape and pull them out. After sleeping on it and waking up still with prickles we decided to try the tape. We only had duct tape so while eating breakfast we had our hands wrapped in the tape and kept pulling. Laurent also doing that around his mouth. It did help and we were definitely a lot less prickly but it hadn’t got all of them.
The car park was next to Belair National Park. So next morning we went for a walk through the park. I had remembered a friend of mine from back home mentioning Geo Caching before and when I googled the park it came up as something to do in it. I had to explain to Laurent what it was- a GPS tracking game where people hide caches then plot their location on to the app for others to find. They vary in size extra small being the size of an old camera film and medium being around the size of a shoe box. We found four that day and would have carried on but it was getting later and we wanted to move on from Adelaide that night.
We had seen a free campsite not that far from Adelaide so decided to head for there. When we arrived we couldn’t find anything that resembled any camping type of thing. Just entrances to people’s property. We found an area off the road and decided to park there for the night. The owner of the house just next to where we stopped drove by and invited us to come up to his house later that night and use their showers and have a beer with him and his wife.
As it had been exactly a week since our last shower we took the man up on his offer and after dinner went up to his house. We sat talking, showered and had an enjoyable evening. The hot shower got rid of the last of the pear prickles.
After being in the desert for most of our time so far in Australia it was amazing being back in a city, even though a small one and being by the beach.

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