2002 Day 2-3 - Adelaide - Well, it's life...

After leaving the cafe, I weaved my way around the streets of the city, taking photos on my Kodak disposable (Hosting courtesy of Webshots:)

Photo 1. North Terrace, facing east, from Morphett Street bridge.
Photo 2. Victoria Square, in the centre of Adelaide.
Photo 3. Light Square - final resting place of Adelaide's founder Colonel William Light. (More info about the statue and a closeup of it)
Photo 4. Eastern Parklands near my motel.
Photo 5. SA Museum, in a historic building in North Terrace.

I also had plenty of chances to observe the near-psychotic behaviour of its drivers and noticing a few unusual things about Adelaide:

1. They have very weird pronunciations for many of their streets and suburbs which are anything but obvious.
2. Adelaide is not pedestrian friendly - you have to go in whatever way the green lights take you and hope you'll eventually reach your destination intact.
3. The city centre and suburbs are two different beasts. The city (although eerily quiet at nights) is quite busy at most times of the day - especially that part of the northern half within about 200m of King William (the central N-S route) and Pulteney Streets (the one east of KW). The suburbs meanwhile maintain a slow and somewhat laidback demeanour.

Let's say the evening was interesting and leave it right there. Although the ending was good - I went to a coffee house called Spatt's on King William Road (bit south of the city) with Andrew, who had been there a number of times before. It was very ambient and intimate and very unlike any other cafe I'd been to - he tried a Gold Wasser which smelled like aftershave, was very potent and had actual little bits of gold leaf in it, and I had a chocolate crunch (kind of like a milkshake with class :P )

On Sunday I walked straight into a picnic in the eastern parklands (Adelaide city centre is completely enveloped by parklands) which all looked very happy and fun, and then wound through the streets again and checked out the State Library (which was in effect a single room with a very dark finish) before meeting up with Andrew. His parents were very sweet and made dinner for me - I don't think they or I wanted me to leave as we were having a very good conversation, but we were to meet a friend of Andrew's who I've gotten to know over ICQ and is very nice. He was as nice in person as I'd thought he would be and it wrapped up an interesting night (we ended up going to Spatt's again :).

Except that I couldn't sleep so I ended up walking all the way to West Terrace (about 6km from the motel) and am now sitting in a net cafe there at 2:40am. :P

So concludes another entry - Tomorrow I leave Adelaide bound for Melbourne, the long way. Don't quite know where we'll go but it should all be nice.