Sat. 9-20-2013, Adelaide Australia
We are off on a new adventure to Australia and New Zealand to celebrate our 20th anniversary ! We spent our actual anniversary on 9-18-13 at the very romantic Country Inn and Suites at the Orlando Airport complete with an even more romantic at the bar of T.G.I.F. The only topper to this was spending my birthday on 9-19-13 on an airplane en route to Adelaide. I should mention we had a direct flight to Adelaide via Orlando to San Francisco to Seoul to Singapore to Adelaide. A mere 30 hours later plus one day as we had crossed the international date line we arrived in Adelaide. Even though we flew first class – 30 hours on an airplane is a very loooong time ! We arrived at our hotel in Adelaide at about 8:30 AM to be told our room would not be ready till about noon time – moan, groan and grumble then off we set to see the great city of Adelaide by foot. We decided to explore the shopping area, the zoo and the botanical gardens. We buzzed through the shopping area – no reason to shop as my suitcases were already over the weight limit when we arrived. Next onto the botanical gardens – beautiful until it started to rain. We embraced the rain like the New Englanders that we are and ran full speed to the zoo to seek some cover and see the pandas. Once at the zoo I had to blink twice when I read a sign that indicated the pandas could not be viewed as they were mating – What ?? Surely this was a joke. To add insult to our plight, we then learned that the pandas only have two days a year to breed, and yep you guessed it, this year is today 9-20-13 and tomorrow 9-22-13 – wow…….. the other highlight to the day was there were kids everywhere – OK, it is a Sat. Then to my horror we learned that it is school vacation week. Maybe it was the jet lag, but we managed to walk about 100 miles in the wrong direction, but fortunately by the time we got back to the hotel at about 3:00 our room was ready. We got to our room and settled in, made some touring plans, then headed out for an early diner at 6:00. We walked and hemmed and hawed over what restaurant to go to, then finally settled on an Italian restaurant. After being seated and waiting for about a half hour, we learned Something New (SN) #1. After you are seated and given a menu, it is your job to go to a window and order, you are then given a flag with a number that you set on your table. The food is delivered to your table when ready. This must be the reason there is no tipping in Australia and New Zealand. We were a bit shocked that a draft beer was $8.00 and a cheese pizza was $22.00 (Australian dollars that is) but we were tired, and ready to get some sleep. We are now back to our hotel, day one is done, and we are looking forward to some serious exploring tomorrow. One thing we did notice is that everyone wears the old throw back flip flops that are made of rubber and we use to call them thongs. Well, they still call them thongs.
We are off on a new adventure to Australia and New Zealand to celebrate our 20th anniversary ! We spent our actual anniversary on 9-18-13 at the very romantic Country Inn and Suites at the Orlando Airport complete with an even more romantic at the bar of T.G.I.F. The only topper to this was spending my birthday on 9-19-13 on an airplane en route to Adelaide. I should mention we had a direct flight to Adelaide via Orlando to San Francisco to Seoul to Singapore to Adelaide. A mere 30 hours later plus one day as we had crossed the international date line we arrived in Adelaide. Even though we flew first class – 30 hours on an airplane is a very loooong time ! We arrived at our hotel in Adelaide at about 8:30 AM to be told our room would not be ready till about noon time – moan, groan and grumble then off we set to see the great city of Adelaide by foot. We decided to explore the shopping area, the zoo and the botanical gardens. We buzzed through the shopping area – no reason to shop as my suitcases were already over the weight limit when we arrived. Next onto the botanical gardens – beautiful until it started to rain. We embraced the rain like the New Englanders that we are and ran full speed to the zoo to seek some cover and see the pandas. Once at the zoo I had to blink twice when I read a sign that indicated the pandas could not be viewed as they were mating – What ?? Surely this was a joke. To add insult to our plight, we then learned that the pandas only have two days a year to breed, and yep you guessed it, this year is today 9-20-13 and tomorrow 9-22-13 – wow…….. the other highlight to the day was there were kids everywhere – OK, it is a Sat. Then to my horror we learned that it is school vacation week. Maybe it was the jet lag, but we managed to walk about 100 miles in the wrong direction, but fortunately by the time we got back to the hotel at about 3:00 our room was ready. We got to our room and settled in, made some touring plans, then headed out for an early diner at 6:00. We walked and hemmed and hawed over what restaurant to go to, then finally settled on an Italian restaurant. After being seated and waiting for about a half hour, we learned Something New (SN) #1. After you are seated and given a menu, it is your job to go to a window and order, you are then given a flag with a number that you set on your table. The food is delivered to your table when ready. This must be the reason there is no tipping in Australia and New Zealand. We were a bit shocked that a draft beer was $8.00 and a cheese pizza was $22.00 (Australian dollars that is) but we were tired, and ready to get some sleep. We are now back to our hotel, day one is done, and we are looking forward to some serious exploring tomorrow. One thing we did notice is that everyone wears the old throw back flip flops that are made of rubber and we use to call them thongs. Well, they still call them thongs.
Who knew ? Airplanes serve birthday cakes !
Finally we have arrived !
Adelaide botanical gardens
Monday, Sept. 22, 2013 – Last night Adelaide
Sunday AM we were up early and decided to get breakfast next door to the hotel and down an alley at a restaurant that looked several steps down from IHOP. We sat and were given the menus. Surely 19.00 for pancakes, 21.00 for waffles is a joke – but no……. We settled on a cup of coffee each, we spilt 2 scrambled eggs, and each had an order of toast. Phew – only $24.00. SN #2 – Australia is expensive !!!! SN #3 – quite the experience trying to order a cup of coffee with milk – the girl kept saying, yes, but what kind of coffee do you want ? Although we were all speaking English, ordering the coffee was an impossible task. Finally another staff person came to assist, understood that I wanted a cup of coffee with some milk in it, and informed that what I wanted was a Flat white. When I apologized for not understanding, I was told SN #4 – “no worries mate !” After our brekky, we were off to explore. We decided to take a city bus to the port. After trying to get on about 6 buses in row and being told it was not the right bus, an hour later we finally got on the right bus and off we went. We arrive at the small port area, and promptly decide to take a three hour cruise on the Torres River along with every school age child in Australia. After the cruise we got lunch – $48.00 for a small green salad, a hamburger and two draft beers seemed like a bargain after breakfast. OK – not too much more talk about prices – you get the drift, it is expensive to eat and drink here – we even looked at the McDonalds menu and were shocked to see a soda as $4.00, a hamburger was $8.00 and a small fry was $4.50. I noticed Jon starting to get a little twitchy, I think he will be needing allot more oil than he intended for the ol’ rusty wallet. Jon was especially twitchy when we went the liquor store SN #5 – called a bottle shop, and we bought a fifth of Smirnoff vodka for $40.00. We took a bus back to town, then boarded a tram car to head to Glenelg beach. I discovered that sunny Sundays in early spring are an extremely popular day for every person in Adelaide as well as all people living in the surrounding 500 miles to go to the beach. We settled in at a ocean side pub, then took the tram back to our hotel and got in about 6:00 PM. We walked around the corner to a Thai restaurant for dinner, then early to bed for our first official tour. The morning was a city tour along with a visit to the local Haighs chocolate factory, a visit to the Adelaide Hills with panoramic views of the city, then on to Hahndorf which was a delightful German town. We ate lunch in Hanhdorff, and SN #6 – restaurants all have old bottles that they fill up with water that you can take to your table, and the water in Australia is delish ! The second part of the tour was to the Barossa valley for wine tasting/ touring of 3 wineries. When you have 20 people on a bus each tasting is a bit of a “Splash and Dash.” Each winery had about ten kinds of wine, you could sample whatever you wanted, Most people would sample 2 - 3 kinds of wine but not Jon and I. We were determined to sample and enjoy all that Barossa valley had to offer, and by golly we did ! We enjoyed the beautiful scenery and an about a three hour round trip drive, as well as the 30 different wines we sampled. I must confess we did snooze a “wee while” on the return trip but we rallied for our last night tonight which consisted of quick dinner and we are ready to go to bed now at 8:00 PM. Tomorrow we fly to Alice Springs which will be the starting point of our three day tour of the outback. We will be meeting our friends Dick and Dorothy from Alabama who will be flying in from Sydney. D& D are our travelling buddies that we met while touring Central Mexico on a train and living with locals in villages along the way. We have also travelled to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands as well as to France with D& D. SN #6 – instead of saying “Good for you” someone told me ”Good on ya mate” today – love it !
Sunday AM we were up early and decided to get breakfast next door to the hotel and down an alley at a restaurant that looked several steps down from IHOP. We sat and were given the menus. Surely 19.00 for pancakes, 21.00 for waffles is a joke – but no……. We settled on a cup of coffee each, we spilt 2 scrambled eggs, and each had an order of toast. Phew – only $24.00. SN #2 – Australia is expensive !!!! SN #3 – quite the experience trying to order a cup of coffee with milk – the girl kept saying, yes, but what kind of coffee do you want ? Although we were all speaking English, ordering the coffee was an impossible task. Finally another staff person came to assist, understood that I wanted a cup of coffee with some milk in it, and informed that what I wanted was a Flat white. When I apologized for not understanding, I was told SN #4 – “no worries mate !” After our brekky, we were off to explore. We decided to take a city bus to the port. After trying to get on about 6 buses in row and being told it was not the right bus, an hour later we finally got on the right bus and off we went. We arrive at the small port area, and promptly decide to take a three hour cruise on the Torres River along with every school age child in Australia. After the cruise we got lunch – $48.00 for a small green salad, a hamburger and two draft beers seemed like a bargain after breakfast. OK – not too much more talk about prices – you get the drift, it is expensive to eat and drink here – we even looked at the McDonalds menu and were shocked to see a soda as $4.00, a hamburger was $8.00 and a small fry was $4.50. I noticed Jon starting to get a little twitchy, I think he will be needing allot more oil than he intended for the ol’ rusty wallet. Jon was especially twitchy when we went the liquor store SN #5 – called a bottle shop, and we bought a fifth of Smirnoff vodka for $40.00. We took a bus back to town, then boarded a tram car to head to Glenelg beach. I discovered that sunny Sundays in early spring are an extremely popular day for every person in Adelaide as well as all people living in the surrounding 500 miles to go to the beach. We settled in at a ocean side pub, then took the tram back to our hotel and got in about 6:00 PM. We walked around the corner to a Thai restaurant for dinner, then early to bed for our first official tour. The morning was a city tour along with a visit to the local Haighs chocolate factory, a visit to the Adelaide Hills with panoramic views of the city, then on to Hahndorf which was a delightful German town. We ate lunch in Hanhdorff, and SN #6 – restaurants all have old bottles that they fill up with water that you can take to your table, and the water in Australia is delish ! The second part of the tour was to the Barossa valley for wine tasting/ touring of 3 wineries. When you have 20 people on a bus each tasting is a bit of a “Splash and Dash.” Each winery had about ten kinds of wine, you could sample whatever you wanted, Most people would sample 2 - 3 kinds of wine but not Jon and I. We were determined to sample and enjoy all that Barossa valley had to offer, and by golly we did ! We enjoyed the beautiful scenery and an about a three hour round trip drive, as well as the 30 different wines we sampled. I must confess we did snooze a “wee while” on the return trip but we rallied for our last night tonight which consisted of quick dinner and we are ready to go to bed now at 8:00 PM. Tomorrow we fly to Alice Springs which will be the starting point of our three day tour of the outback. We will be meeting our friends Dick and Dorothy from Alabama who will be flying in from Sydney. D& D are our travelling buddies that we met while touring Central Mexico on a train and living with locals in villages along the way. We have also travelled to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands as well as to France with D& D. SN #6 – instead of saying “Good for you” someone told me ”Good on ya mate” today – love it !
Jon pondering the $19.00 pancakes
This little boy saw this man taking pictures and proceeded to ask the man to take his picture -
Our jolly captain who was a hoot !
Torres river cruise
My beau and I
Glenelg Beach
Surfers and Australia just go together
A bottle shop is a window service liquor store
Adelaide hills
My mate and I
The famous sheepdog stare
The lovely Hahndorf Inn - German village
Barossa Valley - vineyards as far as the eye could see….
Getting ready to sample the wine
I would like my basement to have these….
The jet lag is really kicking in here….
Palm trees and vineyards…..
I love the shades of green an turquoise
