Our first day in Adelaide started with a jog along the beach path towards Glenelg.

We drove to the end of this section of the beach to park in a nook formed by a creek with very expensive posh houses and walked the rest of the way over the bridge past the marina into Glenelg and Jetty Road to catch the tram. The famous tram ride to Glenelg - only we did it in reverse! Adelaide city is very pretty indeed. The city proper is like the middle of a doughnut and the doughnut is a belt of green. The city is completely surrounded by green. Maybe one day during the stay I'll take the bike in and ride all around the parks.

We alighted at Rundle Mall and headed straight to Haigh's Chocolate shop. Then we explored some of the very nice shops and boutiques. C and A bought a red felt hat from the hatters. J enjoyed looking at the knives and Leathermans in another place. The first planned stop was a yiros place for lunch which I was very excited about but it was a big fizz. The food wasn't very nice and was overpriced for what it was. A and the guys headed for a movie and I went alone to the museum of SA. They have a display of dolphin and whale bones in the café which included a blue whale jawbone. It was about 5m long! J would have liked the spears and other weapons in the Pacific Cultures and Aboriginal sections. Very sobering display on extinct animals from SA - have all happened since Europeans got here and there are so many…

Walking past the art gallery and hospital brought me to the Botanic Gardens. An elaborate wrought iron gate showed me into the garden. It's always somehow just calming to sit on a wooden seat under a shady tree in a carefully tended garden. I just sat still on my own for quite a long time.

Their centrepiece is an aquatic garden with a massive waterlily plant called Victoria Amazonica (or something like that) that can grow huge leaves. There's an excellent bit of architecture (an enormous glasshouse) that looks like a spaceship and houses a tropical rainforest with an elevated walkway. In another section, the roses are just about to come into flower and have clearly had a recent dose of the good organic fertiliser. That is so say, the rose garden stank and didn't look very nice yet. Hopefully the roses in Melbourne and Hobart will be ready by the time I get there.

Met up with the others and took the tram back.

Grocery shopping with A at the little local IGA tonight. Not that I planned it that way, but there's a certain charm to shopping in a small store with a little trolley, narrow isles about 5m long, and more staff than customers. We had fun tasting different foods at the deli and as we were the only customers there at the time, felt quite relaxed about it.