Rockin' and chillin' in Adelaide

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Hello everybody,

So now I've had my first night and first day in Adelaide. After posting the last blog I went off to a bar called The Grace Emily, basically just intending it to be a quick beer as a nightcap before bed. Happily it turned out to be open-mic night with a large number of bands on (each only doing a couple of songs) so I hung around for a bit longer, since quite a few of them were decent enough. As an unexpected bonus (what with my general absence of social skills and all) I got chatting to a few locals too, and so with a kicking out time of about 2am on a Monday night (slight contrast there to sleepy Perth) I had a much better, and much longer night than expected.

The next morning I woke up to a scorcher of a day. I was expecting it to be colder here than West Australia, but not a bit of it! Apparently I have managed to arrive during a bit of a local heat wave- temperatures have been in the high 30s, making me feel very lazy indeed.

Accordingly I decided to have a bit of relaxed day to contrast with my more recent 'cramming it in' approach to my trip. After spending most of the morning sorting out what I'll be doing with the rest of my time in South Australia I wandered across the City Centre to get to the Botanical Gardens and spend the afternoon ambling sedately around them- sticking to the shade wherever possible.

The Botanical Gardens, as well as having the usual areas of various types of plant, had lots of other random extras scattered around. First up was the National Wine Centre of Australia. This didn't seem to have a whole lot in it, and it mostly seemed to be a conference centre- there were a few plaques up in a room saying a little bit about wine-making, but not a lot. I did learn that all the different shapes of wine glasses are supposed to be used with specific wines, as they pour the wine onto a different part of the tongue to accentuate the flavour. All this time I thought it was just some strange pointless traditional etiquette thing. However, for me the best thing about the place was it's brilliant air-conditioning system! I left, feeling perhaps that I had somewhere missed the point of it (although coming back through it a couple of hours later I couldn't stop myself from sampling one of the wines).

Other things around were a glasshouse display of some giant water-lilies, and an unusual little museum of Economic Botany, basically about how plants can be used by people. I could argue that I didn't need a museum to tell me that people eat some plants and use wood to make furniture. More interesting to me were the displays about the 'forgotten plants', such as liverworts, lichens, mosses, hornworts and fungi. And no, I haven't forgotten that most of the above aren't actually plants at all. But they mostly look quite like them, which seems to be good enough for most people. I also popped into the Bicentennial Conservatory, a replica of an Australian rainforest inside a glasshouse, faithful even to the 'rain' coming down from sprinklers. This was the only thing I had to actually pay to see.

And so that I think just about wraps it up, plus I think I might check out another bar and if I keep on with this too much longer there'll be no point in going.

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Photos

Adelaide University
I thought this looked pretty, took a photo, then realised what it was. The students must have thought I was so odd, taking a picture of their lecture theeatre!

A pond in the Botanic Gardens
Just some random pond in the corner.

Raining inside
A view from inside the Bicentennial Conservatory