Adelaide

Adelaide has always been one of my favourite cities in Australia. We spent about 4 weeks there exploring the city and its surroundings.

CBD

All up, we spent 3 or 4 days exploring the CBD. We went to a few museums, shops and the Central Market. Here are some photos from the CBD:

Illuminate

The Illuminate Adelaide event started when we arrived. In the evenings, parts of the city had sound and light art installations.

The night that we went to Illuminate Adelaide it also happened to be Bastille Day and the Central Market was celebrating everything French. We even watched a cooking display of how to make a Croquembouche from Le Cordon Bleu.

Belair

Our caravan park was in the Belair National Park which was only about 20 minutes from the CBD, but felt miles away. The national park was enormous with tons of walks, an adventure playground for the kids, a huge colony of kangaroos and koalas! It was pretty cold while we were there (middle of July – winter) and it rained a lot, but on the days when it wasn’t raining, we tried to walk in the park. And in the evenings, we had a campfire.

Beaches

We spent a day exploring Adelaide’s beaches – from famous Glenelg up to Henley Beach. It was lovely to see the ocean again!

Birthday Dinner

A while back we were given a birthday present of some money to go out to dinner (thank you!!). We were thinking about going out when we were in the Barossa, but then decided that we’d rather go to a Greek restaurant (Estia) that has won a bunch of awards on Henley Beach in Adelaide. We were pretty excited when the time finally arrived – we hadn’t eaten out in ages!!

We got several dishes to share and it didn’t disappoint – it was delicious (and way too much food!)

Murray Bridge

We took a trip out to Murray Bridge and Handorf one day (and the weather decided to stop raining and be beautiful that day!).

Murray Bridge was the first place along the Murray River that they felt they could build a bridge to cross. Before that, if people wanted to go from west to east (say Adelaide to Victoria) they had to take a ferry across. This bridge was a game changer. Murray Bridge still has the original bridges (for both cars and trains) that were built in 1890. (For those of you not in Australia, the Murray River is one of Australia’s largest rivers. It starts in the snowy mountains and then continues west – defining the border between Victoria and New South Wales – until its estuary a couple of hours east of Adelaide).

Handorf

Handorf was a very cute little touristy town just on the outskirts of Adelaide. It has embraced its Prussian past and caters to everything German. The buildings were from the 1800s (very old for Australian standards) and had a lot of character.

Next up, we’ll follow the Murray River along and stop for a bit in Mildura…