I flew from Perth to Adelaide and took a shuttle to my hostel. Adelaide
seemed quite empty. There were nice wide streets. There were parks.
There were not many people. But it seemed like a nice town. After
checking into a pretty good hostel (and cheaper than perth) I went to
Chinatown for dinner. And wow, what a dinner. Ying Chow! They make a
form of Guanddong cooking, and there is a symphony of flavours in
their dishes and large portions and main courses are about US$6. They
also had a great wine list (also cheap), and corkage is $2Aus (=1.40)
if you bring your own.
The next day I went exploring after making reservations for a
hostel in the Barossa. Well almost. I was cut off on the phone, and was
told I had no minutes left. After lots of yelling I finally discovered
that when I bought my phone it did not come automatically with the
minutes I had paid for, but instead there was a code on the receipt
(which I no longer had) and I needed to dial some number and type in
that code to get my minu8tes. I had been operating on the 5 minutes
that comes complimentary with my phone. Well this was all news to me,
and the store I bought my minutes from was back in Perth, so I had to
repurchase a code with more minutes to get my phone to work. Oy.
After wondering around Adelaide for the morning, I took a trolley
to Adelaide's beach. It really was a pretty nice beach, and the main
street had lots of shops (along the lines of the Jersey shore or Venice
beach). That evening I came back to the city and went to the Adelaide
Casino, were I had very bad luck at Poker and lost about $80.
The next day I picked up a rental car and drove down to the
Florieau Peninsula. And what I day I had. First I went to McLaren
Vale, one of the many great wine regions near Adelaide. I visited a few
wineries and then went to the coast (5 miles away) for some mediocre
snorkelling. I then drove to the southern end of the peninsula, near
the ferry to kangaroo island, and took a short walk past some
kangaroos. I then drove to Victor Harbour and walked across a causeway
to Granite Island, a lovely little Island with good views, nice rock
formations (guess what kind of rock) and some animals. I saw quite a
few dolphins swimming off the shore, but it was getting chilly, and the
fairy penguins do not come on to land until after sunset (9 PM!), so I
didn't stick around to see the penguins. Instead I drove back to
Adelaide and went back to Ying Chow. My meal this time was even better
than the last! Wow. I have to say, that Ying Chow is in the top 50 restaurants I have ever been to (probably in my top 25), and everything
else on the list is at least twice as expensive (actually most are more
like 5-10 times as expensive). So if you ever go to Adelaide, visit
Ying Chow (on Goucher St).
