July 6th (Monday) - Day 127 - Adelaide
We arrived in Adelaide a little after 6am. As expected we had not got much sleep which was not helped by the bus driver who loved the sound of his own voice over the microphone. It was 4 degrees when we got off the bus and we had a 10 minute walk to the hostel. If you ever want to be woken up try it! Luckily the land lady of the hostel had given us the door code so we managed to get inside. We spent the next 3 hours in the TV room waiting to for reception to open. Once we had our room we made our way into town to see the sights. Sight seeing became shopping once again because by now Sarah's wet shoes had turned into a bio-hazard - they stank! - so we looked in every shoe shop in town before she found a pair she liked. New shoes in hand we continued our sight seeing. Next on the list was the Haighs chocolate factory. When we arrived the sign said booking was essential and sure enough when we went in all the tours were fully booked. We some how managed to blag our way onto a stand by list and luckily for us some people didn't show. We had the tour (which was far better than Cadbury's) as we got to see how the chocolate is made from start to finish and then at the end the main reason for going - the free samples. The next place we wanted to see was North Adelaide so we spent 90 minutes walking there. Had a look around and then headed back to the hostel. The land lady did a mini tour each Monday night to a look out so we jumped on that and had a look out over the city. She then took everyone staying over to the local pub. Sarah and I headed over a bit earlier to find that the place was rammed and the beer was horrid, combined with the fact we'd had a very long night and day we had a really early night.

July 7th (Tuesday) - Day 128 - Adelaide
After a nice long lay in we headed to town to pick up some lunch before heading to the park. On the way Sarah got attacked by a pigeon. Still not sure how it happened but it came in from behind us and some how tried to land on her head but missed and scratched her eye weirdly enough. Just as we thought the bird related incidents were over a swan tried to attack her in the park. We headed back to the hostel as we had planned to meet Suze (Christine and Graame's cousin who lives in Adelaide). She picked us up from the hostel and took us on a drive to the Adelaide hills. It was really good to meet her as I had heard a lot about her but never meet her. Sarah had met her and they chatted away for hours. On our drive we stopped at a chocolate factory (they seem to love them around here). We then drove for ages through a number of little towns and back to the coast within Adelaide. We grabbed some dinner and she drove us once more back into the hills. As it was now dark we had the best view of the city. Adelaide only had a population of 1.2 million but distance is nothing here and the city spread out as far as you could see in every direction. Suze then drove us back and dropped us off at our hostel. She must have driven us for a good 5 hours! Thanks again Suze - that evening I watched a film in the hostel but as it was a bit rubbish Sarah had the right idea and went off to bed - wish I'd done the same!

July 8th (Wednesday) - Day 129 - Adelaide
Suze had another big day planned for us and she picked us up and drove us about 2 hours south to a little place called Port Elliot. Our first stop was a little calm beach that we spent about 2 minutes walking around before jumping back in the car. We then stopped in a little bakery and grabbed some lunch and took it down to the coast. We clambered down the rocks with no hands and sat and basked in the sun with our lunch. Suze said it was normally really rough and the waves huge; but it was such a calm day. Our lunch was really nice but the cakes were way to big and we all felt a little sick afterwards. While we were eating there was a pink sea gull hanging around. We don't know why it was pink but it looked as if it has been spray painted or something. We some how managed to get ourselves moving again and headed to a look out area. Next we drove into town and walked over a pier to a little island called granite island. They had a tram that ran from the main land to the island which was pulled by a huge shire horse. We would have caught it but it was such a nice warm day by this point we decided to walk. There were so many people out enjoying the day. It took about 45 mins to walk around and before we knew it we were on our way back to the hostel. That night in the hostel was pizza and movie night so we took full advantage of that.

July 9th (Thursday) - Day 130 - Adelaide
The pervious day we went to book our Friday bus back to Melbourne to find it was fully booked until Sunday which would have meant hanging around in Adelaide far longer than we wanted as well as not having enough time to do what we wanted in Melbourne. This is the first time in the whole of Aus that a bus we wanted to catch had been fully booked. Hence we spent the morning looking into ways to get back to Melbourne. Flights were $300 and all the buses were fully booked. Our only option was to get a hire car; most of the companies were really expensive because we were taking the car one way. Luckily we found a company that was not to bad. We had then planned to meet Suze again for the afternoon but unfortunately she was not feeling to well. So instead of meeting Suze we jumped on a tram to the beach. The tram took forever but we made the most of it when we got there. We ate some lunch on the promenade and then took a walk along the pier and the beach. Next we wandered around the tacky gift shops as we still had not got many souvenirs. We then jumped on the tram back as Suze's parents had invited us around for dinner. Suze was feeling a little better so came to collect us. She drove us a really long way back to her place (which made us even more appreciative of the times she'd been to collect us). Her Mum and Dad made us feel really welcome, they saw right through me and offered me a beer and we had a bit of a chat before dinner. Dinner was roast with real actual roast potatoes (funny what you miss when your away). We had a really nice feed as well as a really nice chat. After dinner we continued chatting and got some tips on New Zealand as they had just been themselves. Before we knew it, it was really late so Suze gave us a lift back into town and we said our good byes.

July 10th (Friday) - Day 131 - Long boring drive from Adelaide to Melbourne
As I said yesterday we had to hire a car to get back to Melbourne. We got up as early as the rental office opened and walked in the rain to pick up the car. It was exactly the same make of car as we had in Tassie. We drove back to the hostel and collected our things before setting off. As soon as I got the car going it started to play up. It was cutting out as soon as I was half way through a gear. Luckily it didn't last long once I got it on the freeway; and it didn't happen again all the way back. 750km (500 miles) and way to many games of eye spy later we arrived back in Melbourne bored out of our brains. It was about 6pm and we wanted to get the car back that night to save getting up the next day. It took forever to get checked in at the hostel then the Friday night traffic didn't help matters. We did make it with 1 minute to spare. We made our way back across town and after eating in the casino managed to lose 4 dollars on the slot machines.