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I remember the first time I traveled internationally without anyone to help me, I took my little brother to London for a 10 day vacation. London being in a friendly English speaking country and therefore a low stress destination. I did meticulous research for that trip. I read a travel guide, bought a city map and I even looked up the layouts for the Heathrow airport so I could find the public transport area of the airport. My arrival into Adelaide for the first time really reminded me about how far I have come in ironing familiarity into my travel psyche. I took the Overland train into Adelaide from Melbourne and arrived at the Interstate train station around 6:30pm and by the time I got my backpack and hunted down a free map from information it was very dark. So I located the train station on the map and I walked around the train station and the attached parking lot and I couldn't see any other identifiable landmarks. Such as streets signs or streets. It basically looked like the train station was in the middle of a giant park. This was not how it appeared on the map so I inquired
with the train station and they told me the interstate train station wasn't on my map, that train station was the old train station. So I ended up paying $10 for a shuttle to my hostel. I really hate paying money for transport from my transport. It seems very pointless. If it hadn't been dark I probably would have tried walking anyway. It turns out that my hostel was only about a kilometer from the train station. A few days later when it was time to catch The Ghan to Alice Springs I did walk. This first time I was in Adelaide it was Easter weekend and apparently Australians close shop on good friday, saturday, sunday, and monday. The only thing that was open was the zoo. I like zoos anyway, but the Adelaide zoo has PANDAS! Every Continent needs Pandas. This marks the fourth continent I have seen Pandas on and I don't think Antartica should count because the only things that lives there are Penguins. (and a few hardy humans). The other interesting part of my visit to Adelaide was the Girl With Too Much Information who I met in the hostel. She introduced herself to me and
the proceeded to tell me all about herself. She was moving to Melbourne from Queensland because her boyfriend had dumped her for cheating on him. She doesn't know why she cheated since she loves him, but she has cheated on all her boyfriends. Her fellow cheatee had given her $700 to move to Melbourne and live with him, but she had been delayed in hospital when she tried to kill herself. Then she asked me what my name was. Later she told me how she had spent all of her boyfriends money on a plane ticket (since it was last minute on Easter weekend) and didn't have any money until her welfare application went through. She asked me if she could have my shampoo, which I gave willingly as I had no idea how she would react to a denial since she had no other concept of human social boundaries. On my way back from Darwin I stayed in Adelaide for about 6 days before catching the India Pacific train to Perth. I quite enjoyed this time and I walked around the museums, markets, parks, and cemeteries in Adelaide and managed not to spend too much money. The South Austraila
Museum in particular has an inspiring collection of Aboriginal artifacts and history displays. To contrast with the crazy girl I met in Adelaide the first time I met another American girl from Seattle. She was an engineer in LA before the recession left her unemployed. She decided to use the opportunity to travel and we had a lot of fun talking about all the lovely food we had left behind in the states and how expensive Australia is.
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