Adelaide - Saturday

Woken quite early by a shaft of brilliant sunshine streaming straight onto the bed through a chink in the curtains - our room faces due east. A sign of what the day would be like. By 10am, when we ventured outside, the temperature was already 37 degrees. Baking, but fortunately a dry heat. Too hot really but who can complain knowing how cold it is back home!

Took a stroll through Central Market - an enormous market, around the size of two football pitches, pretty well adjacent to our hotel. The market is more a series of small shops in a covered hall, food shops of all sorts intermingled with jewellery shops, gift shops, a pharmacy and goodness knows what else. Always love seeing the different foods when we are away. One of the fish shops was particularly interesting. So many different types of fish that I've never even heard of, all so beautifully fresh and glistening. Interesting meat stalls too, and fruit and veg, also speciality cheeses.

Back to the hotel and chilled for a while because it really has been too hot to be out in the middle of the day, then we caught a tram from outside the hotel to go and explore the shopping mall, hoping to find some nice architecture. Trams are free in the city centre but we didn't realise initially there is only one tram line, from the beachside resort of Glenelg through the city centre and out the other side to what is know as the entertainment centre. We realised when the tram turned left away from our destination, so leapt off.

Adelaide is a very compact city, built on a grid of roads that run in straight lines and around all four sides is parkland. Really attractive in concept. I had imagined though that Adelaide centre would be full of those Victorian buildings with decorative verandas running round the outside at first floor level. Wrong! Very few of those are left.

We strolled along Rundle Mall which is the main shopping thoroughfare - open air, pedestrianised. Nothing to write home about but you could imagine it being quite adequate if you lived here. Definitely prefer it to Melbourne. We had picked out that Adelaide Arcade, off Rundle Mall, was the most historic part of the shopping zone so high tailed it to that. Very attractive. Indoor shopping street. Small shops on two levels. A taste of Victorian Adelaide.

Then walked through to North Terrace where the main museums and galleries are to be found. Gorgeous buildings, difficult to photograph because this is a wide tree lined road and the trees, which are lovely and afford a lot of welcome shade, get in the way of taking photos. Not complaining! Spent a couple of hours in the South Australian museum. Very interesting including, amongst other artefacts, two levels of aboringal ancestry. Great day to be in there away from the intense heat.

My mind was blown away by Eric the Pliosaur in the fossil and mineral gallery. Eric was a huge reptile who roamed the ocean 115 million years ago. His bones became completely opalised so they retained their shape but no organic matter remained. An opal miner found the first bone around 1990 and sufficient we then recovered for a reconstruction to be made of how he looked. Simply amazing. The bones had a reddish sheen.

Leaving the museum, we caught the city circle bus back to the hotel. This was a good thing to do, apart from the fact that it was air conditioned and was easier on the feet, because as it turns down the east side of the city centre there are signs of those galleried buildings we had expected.

Back in the hotel, now in the 16th floor lounge having a glass of Aussie sparkling and we have a table booked at an Argentinian style restaurant that is known for serving top quality Australian steaks. Not our first choice of restaurant, but we, and the hotel concierge, tried several restaurants and everyone seems to be eating out in Adelaide tonight. Sure we will enjoy our steaks.

We did!

Adelaide - Sunday

What a day! My belief that Adelaide would be beautiful with lots of old Victorian galleried buildings has been completely restored today and I have fallen in love with this South Australian city.

We hopped on the city connect bus close to the hotel this morning, deciding to do a full loop and see where it got us. We knew it would take us over the river Torrens that runs through the parkland just north of the city. Ideally we would have walked in the park, along the river, but the heat was too much for this and our feet too sore. The bus was the way to do it. Instant, undemanding sightseeing!

Crossing the river you can see a tall fountain spraying water like the Jet d'Eau in Geneva but not so tall. Smaller fountains also play water. We then were in the parkland with a golf course to our left. The driver pulled over and went for a stroll leaving the bus engine running. He came back after several minutes and we could see in his windscreen mirror that he was tucking into some pasta in a Tupperware and then reading the paper. Obviously killing time as he was ahead of the timetable.

We drove on and went into the residential area of North Adelaide and this is where we saw so many houses, big and small, all built in that style I had visualised with covered verandas and galleried walkways ornately decorated with Victorian ironwork. I could really imagine living here.

The bus turned onto O'Connell Street and again the driver stopped for a quick catch up of daily news. Moving on you quickly begin to realise why Adelaide is renowned for its Mediterranean style café culture. So many street cafés spilling over with people sitting outside enjoying the Sunday morning sunshine.

We headed back South again and over the river - more fountains - and followed it for a short distance before turning along North Terrace and past all the museums. This now picked up the route we had taken on yesterday's bus, through East Adelaide where we enjoyed again seeing the old style buildings.

The whole bus circuit took an hour, free of charge, and was a total delight. Hopped off the bus at our hotel by Victoria Square just in time to catch the tram out to Glenelg, a seaside resort just 25 mins tram ride away. Glenelg is gorgeous. The tram terminates at Maloney Square - any further and it would be in the sea. The square and Jetty Road leading down to it were bustling, with café culture much in evidence.

The sea was sparkling and turquoise and stretches for miles to north and south and west. A pier juts out into the sea where fishermen were casting their lines and groups of teenagers were jumping into the deep water some 30 feet below.

The beach is pale gold with soft, soft sand. So much going on. A women's beach volley ball tournament (bikini clad of course), a surf board competition - not that there were any rollers today, sailing boats, helicopter tours flying over, boat tours going out, and people generally just having fun on a beautiful Sunday morning.

We walked along the sea front where the promenade turns into Marina Pier. Quality apartments and restaurants line this stretch and right at the end, where you can walk no further, is Sammy's seafood restaurant. A top notch restaurant with amazing looking sea food platters and other dishes being served but we had already decided today was a fish and chip day and Sammy's didn't disappoint.

Strolled back in the intense heat and onto the tram - fortunately the trams and buses are all air conditioned and have reflective glass that deflects a lot of the heat. Back at the hotel at 4.30 for a much needed siesta.

No need for a meal tonight. Just had sundowners in the 16th floor lounge of the hotel and watched a beautiful sunset. Now packed up and tomorrow we fly to Alice Springs. Adelaide has been a truly rewarding place to visit. If we ever come back we would stay at Glenelg, take the tram into the city centre to visit other galleries and museums and to take a walk in that beautiful park, giving the actual city and its shops a miss. You never know, we might even be tempted to stay!!!