Australia: Day 4, Exploring Adelaide

Once Josh was up and moving, we got ourselves together and walked over to Rundle Mall for brekky (Aussie slang for breakfast).  We settled on Briccone, which looked like a cute place to start our day (I had a ham and cheese croissant, Josh had raisin toast and fruit).

We walked all around the mall and picked up postcards and a little notebook for me to keep notes about our trip in (which I’m so glad we did – it’s been helpful with the recaps so far!).  We had plans to take a walking tour of Adelaide through Urban Adventures, which we won through a giveaway on Y Travel Blog, so we went back to the hotel to relax and re-group.

Around 12:30 pm, we decided we should make our way to Victoria’s Square to meet our tour guide.  It was an overcast day, but luckily the forecast didn’t call for rain.  We waited around, but didn’t see a tour guide.  Ten minutes later, I decided to use Josh’s phone to make a call to Urban Adventures.  [Note: We only set one of our phones up for an international data plan – looking back, I wish we would have done one on my phone too!]  In talking with the representative, they’d tried calling me multiple times – but because my phone was off – they couldn’t reach us to let us know the tour guide was sick and they couldn’t find a replacement.  Needless to say, I was kind of bummed out.

They provided us a list of places that they would have taken us, apologized for the cancellation, and offered to refund our money.  Because we’d won the tour, we were able to tell them there was no charge.  We hung up the phone and decided to go at it on our own.  We were a block away from the Adelaide Central Market, so we started our walking tour there.

For a Tuesday afternoon, the place was pretty busy! The entire time we were walking around, I wished we had a kitchen to go cook in – it would have been great to purchase and then enjoy.  The fresh foods looked delicious, and the baked goods were to die for!

Next we decided we wanted to check out the South Australian Museum, which was a nice walk across town.  While we were making our way there, we stopped at the Opal Field Gems Mine & Museum, because I saw Australian opals, and because they were selling Aboriginal art.  One of the store workers took us down stairs to see the art, since we were curious as to what they had.  Downstairs they had an “opal mine” so visitors could see how opals appeared underground, which was kind of neat.  We saw some artwork that we liked, and the one I loved was listed at a little over $1000.  We opted not to buy, knowing that there would be other opportunities to do so throughout our trip.

We continued on to the South Australian Museum and spent a good hour or two inside, looking at the exhibits.  It’s always interesting to me to visit museums – especially ones that are focused on areas you don’t visit often!  They also had an Aboriginal Art gallery, so we went through and looked at the pieces.  The museum shop had some cute items, but we refrained from going crazy on picking up souvenirs for our families back home.

Next we decided to go back to Rundle Mall to make a stop at Haigh’s Chocolates – which would have been a stop on our Urban Adventures tour.  The shop smelled fantastic and they had a wide variety of chocolates to purchase – yum!

All the walking, in combination of a little bit of jet lag, we were getting a little sleepy and started making our way back to the hotel around 4:30 pm.  We were doing better than we did the day before at this time!  We saw a restaurant next to our hotel and determined that we’d eat at 6 pm – hoping it would help us stay up longer.

While we were in the hotel, Josh came across the Ladbrokes World Darts Championship on TV (little did I know that we’d be watching it frequently on our trip).  He was hooked!

Dinner was at The Griffins Head and was quite delicious! Josh ordered the special for the evening – Rump steak, salad, and chips, paired with a Coopers Pale Ale.  I enjoyed battered Barramundi and chips, with a glass of house chardonnay.  Ordering was a bit different, in that we went up to the bar, ordered, paid, and then took a number back to our table for them to bring us our food.  There really was no service after that – unlike here in the States.  It worked out just fine, and would be a trend we’d see along the way at other restaurants.

We were back in the room by 7:30 pm after stopping at the convenience store for dessert.  Josh picked up a chocolate and vanilla cone, and I was very excited to see a Splice Bar – by far one of my favorite after dinner treats in the brasserie while at Bond Uni!

The cold treats hit the spot and we relaxed until we opted to go to bed at 10 pm – definite progress for our second night in Australia!  I’m still not quite sure how I managed to sleep knowing about what we’d be doing the next day!

 

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