Iter Facere

Adelaide is nice

Wednesday, July 18
Adelaide, 5:30 PM

We changed our minds about Adelaide today. The area around our hotel is still dead at night, but Adelaide is charming. We slept late, and started walking about 10:00 am. We made our way to the Central Market, a big indoor market at the main square. Jenny’s first comment was that it was like the Spice Market in Istanbul, with all of the vendors and stores. We bought Mom a gift and discovered a little restaurant row behind the market. Finally. Many many ethnic places, Indian, Malaysian, Vietnamese. Pretty nice. The market is on the main square which is surrounded by government buildings. Hence the dullness of the area between our hotel and this place. We walked eastward toward another restaurant street, Hutt Street. Within a block a dull set of auto dealers and parts stores. Oh well. When we got to Hutt Street, we didn’t see much interesting, but we were at the edge of the area marked on the map. We turn north towards the museums. As we neared the museum area another place opened up with cafes and interesting, snug looking buildings with deep balconies and intricate iron work.

We then went into the South Australia Museum. It is a natural history museum and also has a large Aboriginal collection. Several things struck me. The first is that every Aborigine in pictures looks emaciated. Clearly hunting and gathering is a tough life in such a difficult environment. Second, I can’t begin to understand their mythology and thinking. It is completely different from what I know. Third, I was amazed that the entire continent had a native presence. I had assumed that the center was uninhabitable. I might be wrong, but looking at a map in the museum it appeared that there were permanent inhabitants everywhere. Wow.

After the museum, we walked up the Torrens River to North Adelaide and the zoo. The river has a nice park on both banks. It’s very attractive. We walked up to Melbourne Street to find food. At first I thought we had made a poor decision, but Jenny said press on and viola, a pleasant cafe area.

We had a quick break and the headed back to the Adelaide Zoo. Its a small, pleasant zoo. Obviously a lot of Australian animals. The Tasmanian devils were particularly neat. The African section had meerkats, which do anthropomorphize nicely. Many spectacular birds. If this small zoo is this nice, I wonder what the Sydney Zoo has in store?

Feet aching, we headed back to the hotel through part of the Botanical Garden. The parks here are really lovely. It didn’t hurt that is was a beautiful day, about 6oF. We stumbled back on our worn stumps and decided we would take a cab to dinner, where ever it might be. After seven and a half straight hours of walking and standing, we are more than willing to have someone else drive us around.

posted by Jim @ 10:03 AM