Saturday, December 27, 2008

Adelaide

Our flight to Adelaide was a piece of cake compared with the time warp from Boston to Sydney. The flight took us just under two hours but we were at the airport about 3 hours ahead of time. That's due to our brains still operating on east coast time (it's proving very difficult to break that). Elisha and I are routinely waking up anywhere between 4:30am - 6:00am. This morning I amazingly didn't arise until 7:30ish...but also didn't get to sleep until about 3:00am. That's traveling for you... you can always sleep when you get back home.

The past couple of days have been great. December 26th here is a national holiday called "Boxing Day". Hardly anything was open but luckily we arrived at our hostel without much of a problem. Originally we had canceled it and planned to stay with my friend James whom I met traveling Europe this summer. James, however, typed his mobile number wrong by mistake and we were unable to reach him until later that night. We ended up meeting him the following day; all works out in the end.

Here's an outline of what we did since arriving in Adelaide:

December 26:
  • Flight arrives at 11:45am, we arrive at our hostel around 2:00pm.
  • Immediately upon arrival, we are told there is a soccer match about to be played (our hostel versus a neighboring hostel). I quickly change and gear up for my international debut.
  • I play soccer in the scorching heat for about an hour with other travelers from Ireland, England, Germany, Australia, Hungary, Switzerland and The States (me). Probably a few other countries as well. Our hostel won 2-1 and I was very proud of my performance.
  • We made a trip to the supermarket later that night and made a delicious meal that consisted of rotini, cream sauce, chicken, salad, and some veges.
  • We met some great people at the hostel and talked with them for a few hours that night. Overall, a much better hostel experience than in Sydney.
December 27:
  • We had an early breakfast (7am) and walked around what we thought was the royal botanic gardens. We've seen some extremely colorful, noisy, and exotic birds already on this trip.
  • James met us at our hostel around noon. We walked around Adelaide and James bought a few things from the city. The after-Christmas sales were crazy and everyone was out shopping yesterday.
  • A friend of James met up with us and we all drove together to the real Adelaide botanic gardens. We sat there and talked about Australian and American life, told some stories, and listened to each other's funny accents. Elisha and I hadn't laughed that much since before we arrived in Australia. Great blokes.
  • We drove to where James is living: showered, took a nap, and had some dinner.
  • We went to another friend's house and we stayed there for about 4 hours total. It is great knowing a local anywhere you go and being able to have a real cultural experience. We had some drinks with our new Australian friends and it was just a very cool thing being in a foreign country and playing games with 15 Australians (all our age).
  • We went to a pub and were very tired by this point. Elisha, James and I took a taxi home around 2:30 (hopefully we are over jet-lag now, but only time will tell).
Today James is going to a music festival so Elisha and I are just going to explore the city and hang out at his place until he returns. Tomorrow night we hop on a bus to Melbourne to explore an even more southern part of Australia. Then it's flying up north after the new years.

http://k43.pbase.com/u37/philinnz/upload/24237802.satreebnw2.jpg

A tree at the royal botanic gardens

http://www.stephenparnham.com/Australia/Adelaide%20Botanic%20Gardens.JPG

At the Adelaide Botanic Gardens


Cheers.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the update, honey. So glad you are having a great time and is so good that you are meeting people your age- such fun. Will write later as off to a holiday party soon.

    Love Mom

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