Adelaide

Today we explored the city of Adelaide. Ian's house isn't far from the CBD so it was a short 15-20 minutes bus ride into the center.

Our first stop in the city was the Art Gallery of South Australia. With today being Good Friday, not many things were open, but luckily the art gallery was! It was bigger than expected with a variety of art from European artists as well as a strong focus on Australian and Indigenous artists as well. We walked around seeing the collection of paintings and sculptures for about half an hour before joining a free tour with a very passionate volunteer. He pointed out some more religious themed artwork to keep in the Easter theme. There were a lot of different kinds of art from sculptures of human, baboon mother hybrids, to portraits of aristocrats and, of course, many Renaissance religious motifs and altar pieces. There was something in the art gallery for everyone, especially the big red room of strings all over. That was especially memorable. Apparently it was only meant to be in the gallery for a year, but it's still there six years later!

After the art gallery we walked over to the botanic gardens and happened upon an outdoor exhibit of ChaSOMETHING glass throughout the park. During the day it's free to walk around the gardens and see everything, but at night the glass is lit up and it's a paid event. We made our way around the gardens enjoying the sunshine and fresh air as well as the beautiful sculptures. The sun on the glass really made the colors shine. I especially liked the one with the boat and the sun at the end. It was a really nice way to spend a couple of hours wandering the gardens in search of the 16 sculptures. At the end, we popped into a building with some botanic samples and also saw some designs by children of creatures that would live in the habitats inspired by the glass sculptures. It was a nice touch to the exhibit.

We left the gardens and headed back the way we came, jumping into McDonald's for cheap cones for a snack. We did a short walk over to the river near the Adelaide Oval, the cricket stadium, and over the bridge. The sun was going down creating a nice sky and the lights were on at the stadium and on the bridge. We got a nice view of the CBD skyline lit up.

With our walk finished, we headed back towards the bus stop. Again, it was a short trip back to Ian's where Sunny was busy at work making homemade Chinese dumplings. She even made some veggie ones for me which was very kind of her. We enjoyed our dumplings and nice conversation. We ended up staying awake until almost midnight! We have an early wake up tomorrow to get a two hour bus down to the McLaren Vale for wine blending. Sadly, no rental cars were available with it being Easter weekend. Who knew Easter was such a huge thing here! The whole place pretty much shuts down!Läs mer