Adelaide
Filed under: australia, city, friends, photography, travel | Tags: aami stadium, adelaide, adelaide crows, adelaide paringa motel, afl, australian rules football, biscuits, brunch, cafe, central markets, cheap pints, check in, cookies, exeter, festival centre, flight, flying, food, football, grandma, hawthorn hawks, holiday, jetstar, king william street, long exposures, mekong thai, night photography, north terrace, not coffee, pub, public transport, receptionist, relatives, rundle mall, rundle street, skybus, southern cross, thai, torrens, travel, trip, tullamarine, vegan, victoria square |
After it being a good year since last visiting Adelaide, the arrival of a football game between my friend’s team (Hawthorn) and my team (Adelaide) in Adelaide seemed like a good excuse to go back.
It was a difficult trip, with the Skybus to Tullamarine leaving from Southern Cross at around 5am, requiring a ridiculously early start on our part! The trip to the airport, checking in and the flight itself were all very smooth – especially considering we were flying with Jetstar!
Adelaide at 7am was fairly cold, but we managed to find the bus (which was running on a Saturday morning) and get into the centre of town. Finding the hotel was no problem, but check in wasn’t until 2pm, so we had some time to kill. Luckily we could leave our big bags in the hotel while we explored the early morning city. After walking up Rundle Mall, Rundle Street and looping back around on North Terrace, we stopped for a bite to eat (brunch?) at a small cafe called ‘Not Coffee’.
As we weren’t staying with my Grandma this time, we went to see her later on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the buses were over an hour apart so we ended up getting a taxi out into the inner suburbs. As my friend is vegan, I had baked some cookies to take with us to save my Grandma stressing over finding something vegan. As it turned out, she did have some other biscuits in her cupboard which were milk/animal-free, but little else!
Back in the city, we got off the bus and went in the Central Markets for a look around – not much has changed – and then back up through Victoria Sqaure. Many a photo was taken.
Thankfully after that we could check in and had a little nap so that we wouldn’t crash too early that night. Our hotel was the Adelaide Paringa Motel, which despite the old decor, was clean, cheap and cheerful. The receptionist was quite amusing too, making sarcastic comments about the ’sights of Adelaide’!
We went out just as the sun was going down and went down to the Torrens, opposite the Festival Centre to scope out potential night-shooting places; unfortunately we came up with very little and didn’t go back down there later.
Dinner that night was at a delicious Thai joint in Hindley Street called Mekong Thai. The prices were reasonable (especially for booze), the food delicious and service fantastic. I’m still trying to establish what was wrong with it!
That evening we headed down to Rundle Mall to take some night shots. A surgical mask on the pigs covered the hilarity of the swine flu panic, and then the balls and some other long exposures were enough to cover a night shoot in Adelaide. The idea of a warm hotel room and a good nights sleep was just too tempting, so we had an early night.
Sunday; the day of the footy. Without too much before the early afternoon game, we took a quick walk down King William Street to do some shooting before catching the bus out to the game. I’m still in awe that the public transport is so readily available and civilised.
The game itself was OK – we played well, but could have played better. Hawthorn didn’t deserve to win, but we could have fought a lot harder and won by a bigger margin. Overall though, very happy result and a great atmosphere for the game. The little bit of rain was only a little off-putting but thankfully didn’t last too long.
After catching the bus back into the city (still in awe), we headed back for a rest at the hotel and then out for an early dinner again. Again we settled on Thai, but this wasn’t as impressive (down on Rundle Street), and then a couple of (dirt cheap) pints at the Exeter to keep us warm before walking back down to our hotel.
Monday morning was free for us until around 1pm, so we took a last walk around the city for photos. A loop took us up onto North Terrace, through the museum/university area, back around down Frome Road, down towards Victoria Square and back along Rundle Mall to our hotel. By this time, we were both ready for a sit down! The journey back was uneventful other than a 20 minute delay on the flight, and we managed to get home between the light showers of rain.
