Adelaide Day 4 - Downtown

Our morning was filled with adventures. We first took the row boat out onto the lake next to the cottage. When the many ducks and birds saw us coming, they did not hesistate to approach us and "asked" for food. We did bring some bread with us and it was fun having a bunch of them follow us in the boat as we row around the lake. There was a small (really, really small) island on the lake that had a gazebo in it with a table and some chairs. We would've stopped but we were worry that we couldn't manage getting on and off the boat (we had a little bite of trouble getting on it....), so we just rowed back to the cottage.

It's time to head to downtown Adelaide, so we packed our things and said goodbye to the ducks. Before we got to downtown though, we had to make a stop to see the largest rocking horse in the world (although it didn't rock).

This place was actually a woodwork factory that made a variety of kids toys. They also had a little wildlife park there, where we were followed and headbutted by one of their sheep during our walk around the entire park.

We also did get chance to see some other wildlife too, such as kangaroos, wallabies and peacocks.

After the toy factory we began our approach to downtown Adelaide. We were not too sure what to expect, as we had heard that it was a fairly small town, and some people laughed when we told them that Adelaide was part of our trip. It turned out to be fairly dissappointing. While I'm sure it is a wonderful town to some people, coming from San Francisco, it is rather boring and limited. Also, for the first time on our Aussie trip we did not feel safe walking down some of the streets. We did have a fairly good time at the local market, and found a nice deli where we picked up some indian food to reheat for dinner that evening. Our hotel for the next few days will be the Franklin Central Apartments, located in the heart of downtown. One novel thing we discovered about Adelaide (from looking at the map) is that the Downtown area is completely surrounded by park area.


The rest of our evening was spent doing laundry. We purposely picked this place, knowing it had laundry facilities, so we only had to take 4 suitcases, instead of the usual 8.

Anna's Aussie Tidbits:

The food court at the central market is a little different than ours. Among the many Asian stalls (somewhat like Panda over here), you get a plate to load up the items instead of being given, like a buffet. It's charged by the plate, not weight, so good for the big eaters. Also, competition is hot among the stall. Two stalls we passed by had sign for $6. To try to lure our business, one stall lowered its price to $5 and then the other across shouted to us that it'll match the $5 deal. In the end, we went to a restaurant. Just didn't like the idea of all these food sitting out with people picking at it. We're not willing to risk getting sick for cheap food.