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| Erin's Western Australia Journals - 11-30-02 Today, on to Adelaide! We got up and packed, then Ken & Adele saw us off at the domestic terminal. The short flight was only 2 hours & 45 minutes, but the time change of 1 1/2 hours meant we arrived at 3:05pm. Andrew, a friend we'd met in Florence many months ago, had offered to pick us up at the airport and we looked forward to catching up. When we arrived, he was there waiting with his friend Kylie, and we chatted with them while we waited for our bags. As we walked out to the car, we stopped in at a small museum in the parking lot, which houses the small bomber that made the first flight to Australia from England in less than a month - back in 1919! Andrew is a font of knowledge about Adelaide and the surrounding area, so he took us up to Mount Lofty to get an overview of the city layout and local countryside. Adelaide sits beside the southern ocean, and is relatively small for a state capital. It's very orderly in its layout, and we enjoyed the viewpoint. Then he drove us down to town and we toured the city a bit before looking into the biggest hostel in town. As it turns out, the eclipse that will be seen in a few days from a nearby small town has caused many travellers to converge on Adelaide, so the hostel was completely booked, and the few others we called were as well. We hadn't used the hosting organization, Servas, yet on this trip, so we decided now was a good time to try it out. We looked up a local host and gave them a call, but they were having a dinner party that night and asked us to call later in the week. The 2nd host had space for us, though, and was conveniently located down near the beach suburb of Glenelg, near where Kylie lived. So we all drove down to the host's house and introduced ourselves, then got out of the way as she had a prior dinner engagement as well. Andrew, Kylie, Glenn and I then took a walk down by the beach, toured a few shops, and stopped for a good dinner before watching some couple get married on the grass in front of a beach hotel (The Grand, which is the biggest one there!) and seeing the sunset from the pier. After dark was settling, we walked back and said goodnight to our friends before heading over to the local cinema to catch a late show of Harry Potter #2! It was good, and Glenn didn't even fall asleep! At midnight when it let out, we ambled back to the house and crashed for the night. |
| Glenn with Andrew and Kylie |