Friday, 8 February 2013 – Adelaide, Australia
Even though it's the state capital and the only real city in South Australia, lovely Victorian Adelaide gets no respect. The locals tell you that it is too far from anywhere. The weather they say is too hot in the summer, and the encroachment of modernity has spoiled it. I noticed nothing different from when I was here in 1990. The first item, its distance from anywhere else, is definitely true since Adelaide is essentially the most western city before the great deserts of Western Australia that go for more than 1000 miles all the way to the Indian Ocean. But the weather is delightful with clear skies and low humidity, and the city is gorgeous with lots of old historic colonial buildings. Adelaide was laid out in a compact rectangle surrounded by manicured parkland and has a busy pedestrian mall with a remarkable assortment of ethnic restaurants and mid to high level retail outlets. Because of its isolation, Adelaide has a disproportionate allotment of excellent art and cultural museums and is also a college town as it is the home of the huge University of Adelaide.
After seeing the mood of some of the other guests at breakfast, Barbara and I decided not to wait for the first shuttle bus for the 45 minute ride with other Silver Whisper guests into the city. Instead we walked across the street from the ship's berth at the busy container port's very unused "Passenger Terminal" to the little train station. The very unionized commuter lines had the requisite half dozen railway attendants standing around in front of the boarded up station who amused us by giving us their view of Adelaide: "Too busy, bad climate, changing too much, and nothing to do," they said. They also said they haven't been into town for many years. We boarded the train without tickets as the half dozen conductors on the two car train advised us that we could buy all day transit passes at the Adelaide Station "if we want to." Ya gotta love Australia.
I used the free Wifi that covers most of downtown Adelaide to catch up with my correspondence, post a few pictures, and update about 25 apps on the iPhone. Barbara enjoyed pacing up and back and taking pictures of me. We then, 1) toured the UA campus, 2) walked along the river, 3) checked out the equally lovely Botanic Gardens, 4) visited the National Wine Institute (it being a bit early for wine tasting and found that the very innovative wine smell machines only squirted stale air), and 5) walked back through the compact city.
The next activity planned was to take the very recommended tram trip to the beach at Glenelg. I wanted to repeat my palindromic trip of 20-something years ago. That is, our plan was to take the tram round trip to Glenelg and walk up and back on the beach, and recite all the palindromes we know. We never made it all the way to Glenelg as my enroute calculations indicated that we wouldn't have sufficient time in Glenelg to have lunch and get back to the port without rushing, a decidedly non-South Australian thing to do. Instead we detram'ed at a nice suburban park and returned to downtown Adelaide to get a snack. We returned via commuter train to the Outer Harbor Station. (Note the lack of the "u" in its name, showing how Adelaide just doesn't put on airs.)
We returned to our suite to have a couple of beers on our veranda while watching the busy traffic in the harbor(u)r with time before sailing to take in some more of the curious artwork onboard Whisper. (Included above is a picture said to be of the Silversea owner's mother and another of a guy with constipation, I believe). We then watched the sail out with a glass again on our veranda, this time with a glass of port. Others were also enjoying the sailout from their verandas in their own way.
It was a thoroughly lovely day in this most unassuming Australian capital city.
Today, February 9, we have set our watches back from the curious GMT +10.5 hour time zone of South Australia to GMT +10 hours, a time zone that my electronic watch can only be made to display as the time in Tokyo but with daylight savings time, a combination that the other electronics don't like as Japan doesn't observe summer time. Tonight we set our watches back another hour and then another advance tomorrow night to reach the time zone of Western Australia which doesn't observe daylight savings. It makes your head hurt.
No comments:
Post a Comment