Adelaide is another nice clean and well organised city, and I'm glad as I am stuck here until Friday! All of the popular tours are fully booked out by the students who are on a break at the moment, and so this is the earliest I can leave...
The YHA place here is very nice (as they all seem to be) and has plenty of facilities to keep us happy and stay reasonable cheap. The shared kitchen is nice and after Nick managed to burn soup (yup!) on the first night and then try to poison me on the second night with slimey cheese and raw pork, I think I'll have to do some cooking! I did have a chilli con carne last night (Tuesday), with rice and salad and a nice fresh roll, which made a lot of people jealous... haha! I fancy trying some Kangaroo steak at some point, so will pick one up from the supermarket today.
At the north of the city is a main street which has the university buildings, library, museum and art galleries on, which were all worth a good explore. The art gallery had some superb modern art and installations which kept us amused for a while.
On the first night I won the table tennis tournament in the hostel, for which I won a free 'big breakfast' from reception, which turned out to be a little box of cereals and some bread and juice, can't grumble though!
We've killed most evenings here by playing cards, table tennis and pool and drinking too much beer. I'm going to have a few sensible nights once I get to Alice I think, all this beer is not healthy (not to mention that I'm missing a cold cider now and getting bored of beer!).
It's Wednesday now (Happy birthday mum!!!!! x) and Katie has left to get her flight to the east coast, Fiona also left this morning to go on to Alice Springs (she booked ahead for her trip). I've met some cool new people here in the hostel though, a Canadian chap called Bradley who is on his forth trip to Aus! A Belgian guy called Filip who gave me some excellent tips for New Zealand and further afield, and a crazy Nepalese guy called Bob who is shot to pieces and great fun to hang around with! (He speaks Hindi, Japanese and English very well, random!)
So I leave on Friday for a seven day, six night tour across the outback to Alice Springs, taking in all the major sights on route, including of course Ayres Rock. I have prebooked two nights in Alice, a flight to Brisbane and the last four nights in Brisbane before I fly from there to New Zealand. I don't think I'll bother buying a guide book for NZ as most people say the travel network and information is as good as here... so I should be fine!
I've not played any poker, which was my plan whilst here, as I've been busy moving around or spending time with people! I'll probably play some in Brisbane before I go, but have learned already not to book or plan to far ahead... anything can happen!
Catch you all from Alice or Brisbane.
Laters
Sloggs :-)
Pictures of Austrlia over on Photobucket...
