Welcome to Adelaide

The train arrived in Adelaide at 7am, ahead of schedule so the Fremantle fans travelling up the back could catch their connecting buses and trains to Melbourne for the AFL Grand Final. I can only imagine that it was a journey filled with unprecedented excitement and anticipation surpassed only by the degree disappointment and heartache on the excruciatingly long journey home.

Kids, I said, I'll go get the hire car. I grabbed a cab and headed in to town. Three minutes later I was there but the office didn't open until 8am. I sat on the concrete stairs and waited while Geoff and the kids sat at the station and waited. Finally I got the car, plugged the station into my phone GPS and was off. Now I love GPS - when it's on the money, but I could see from the map it wasn't quite right. After an 8 kilometre lap of Adelaide, taking in the same sights I saw first time round, I finally pulled over and asked a cab driver. I'd missed the road into the station by about 10 metres - ahhhhh!!! So 2 hours after setting off, we were finally reunited. First stop, the zoo.

Adelaide has a great zoo and the only pandas in Australia that they pay a million bucks a year for the privilege, so they'd want to be bloody cute!!! And they were.

On arrival, we were met by a zoo rep who was selling animal encounters. It as $30 each to get up close to the giant tortoises - so $120 for all of us. Outrageous - but I guess they need to pay for those pandas. We passed. But when we got around to the tortoises, one was so close to the fence that I got the shot we would have paid $120 for and the girls (and all the other people there) could just reach over and give him (or her?) a little scratch. I think they need to rethink that deal. Or train the tortoise not give away what they can get people to pay for!!

It's a really lovely zoo, beautiful gardens, happy looking residents so if you're there, it's worth a visit, even though it probably takes a good three minutes to get there from the centre of town (yes, three minutes).

Mum and Dad had come to Adelaide and met us at the zoo. Geoff popped back to put more money in the meter but too late - we got a parking fine. But only $45 which is cheap compared to Melbourne.

The next morning, Geoff trotted out of our hotel early to top up the parking metre - he was 20 minutes late and yes, another $45 parking fine. Welcome to Adelaide!

It was the day of the AFL grand final so we headed down to Glenelg on the tram (such a novelty when you're from Melbourne - not!). We took a family selfie on the pier and then Mum suggested we find the Oyster Bar. Good plan, Mum. It wasn't quite lunch time but hey, we were on holiday!

Then back to the folks' fancy hotel to drink red wine and order a cheese platter and watch the footy. I'm not really into footy but I really did feel for all those Fremantle fans who'd been in the less luxurious Red Class of the train and then an eight hour bus ride - all at great expense to witness THAT.

Anyway....there was a baby Spiegel tent in the park over from said fancy hotel that had free 15 minute shows. We queued up for the first and it was so good we rushed around twice more and saw three before dinner. Adelaide does arts so well! So a quick dinner in the closest pub and another great day in Adelaide was over.

Daphne, a performer in Adelaide pouring a wine while hoola hooping.