We arrived in Adelaide late around 9pm on Friday night to unexpectedly find that it was Labour Day weekend and the Adelaide Festival (think antipodean Edinburgh Festival) so things in town were rather busy. We attempted to find somewhere for dinner but were left with only fast food joints to choose from as it was quite late once we'd been to the hostel and found our beds. We found a Mexican place doing tacos and burritos and grabbed some fries from Macca's, not the most salubrious of meals but it tasted good!

On first impression, and having only walked down what had euphemistically been called 'stripper street' by 2 people we spoke to on the bus from the airport, Adelaide had an air of Blackpool about it. It wasn't as tacky as Blackpool but it was home to a large number of seedy-looking bars, kebab shops, Thai massage parlours, shisha bars, bookies and 'adult' shops (are shops that don't sell fetish wear all children's shops?). We headed to bed early and decided to give the city a proper look over in the morning.

We had a good wander around the shops on Saturday. We found Chinatown which felt a bit unauthentic after Singapore and KL, but the Adelaide Central Market was definitely a good find. We're both pretty keen cooks so it was inspiring to walk up and down the aisles of amazing fruits, veggies, cheeses, meats, bread, pasta, olives, chocolate, coffee etc. Unfortunately it wasn't near lunchtime but we bought some posh pasta from a deli for dinner.

We headed back towards the shopping precinct through the side streets and stumbled upon an area set up for street theatre. It was part of the festival fringe and we watched a show by a guy called Beautiful Stu from London. He was very funny and very quick witted and did a combination of juggling and comedy, some of which was done only wearing pants. After him we saw a woman spin lots of hula hoops while occasionally waving her arms like a swan. She was a bit eccentric! Later in the evening we saw 2 Canadians do some slightly camp acrobatics and then an American do some not very good 'Heavy Metal Magic'. Sadly we were too tired to stay late in the festival site; a poor night of sleep due to noisy dorm-mates and air-conditioning meant we were ready for another early night.

I woke 2 hours before Josh did, who apparently made the switch to Eastern Summer Time much easier than I did! We went to buy some food and then found the Museum of Southern Australia (which was quite similar to the MoWA that we saw in Perth!!). They had an opalised dinosaur fossil which looked like a standard museum dinosaur skeleton, but on closer inspection was pearlescent with beautiful opal colours running through it, it was stunning. The art gallery had an interesting mix of stuff; the usual paintings of beardy men, naked maidens and cherubs, some portraits from 1940's, aboriginal art, a giant neon-yellow rhino and a rather strange installation that consisted of two stuffed horse carcasses sewn together so that there was no heads, just the bodies. This was then hung from the ceiling... it was very, erm, striking?!

Feeling tired of walking around too much; we went in search of more fringe performances. We found on with a pair of Japanese dancers/silent comics who were very funny and impressive with their improvisation and reactions to the crowd. By the time it finished the shops were shutting (shops shut promptly at 5 in Australia) so we went back to the hostel to cook dinner (tomato, bacon and bean soup) and to pack for our early departure the next morning. We realised that the pizza we'd bought to cook for our lunch the next day was a silly idea, as unfortunately the hostel kitchen didn't have any ovens, doh! Thankfully I had a flash of resourceful genius and managed to create a few sandwiches with some of the breakfast items on sale at reception (bacon egg and tomato, not cocopops). We watched a bit of Aussie Masterchef and Elementary before going to bed.

I think we saw most of Adelaide that we wanted to, and being honest it wouldn't be high on our list of places to return to. It wasn't as chilled out as Perth and didn't have the same natural beauty or wildlife. On a positive, unlike Perth, it did have lots of large, impressive Victorian civic buildings, a festival and a market. We're looking forward to our epic 828km train trip to Melbourne and of course, the Aussie grand prix (which I will warn you now, will be mentioned frequently in blogs in the next few days due to catatonic levels of excitement).

Anna and Josh x