Another early start (why do I always get up earlier when I’m on holidays?) so we can make some final purchases at the central market and also get some breakfast. We walked down the aisles and ran in to Mark, our tour guide from two days ago and had a chat. We thanked him for his advice about Wah Hing and he suggested we try Zeds for breakfast. I got the blueberry pancakes, Kelly got the normal ones and Pauline had the big breakfast. I’ve noticed that a lot of the menus in Adelaide tend to list where the product is from, i.e it’s not just pancakes with honey, it’s pancakes with Kangaroo Island honey. I think that is a brilliant way to make the patrons think about locality and it makes you feel good to support the small companies.

We ate our breakfast while watching the morning preparations for the stalls around us, forklifts racing everywhere, lights being turned on and fruit being displayed to appeal to the buyer. I bloody loved my pancakes – blueberrys are excellent. Kelly raced off to buy some Tea while I picked up some of Lucia’s sauce and some dukkah. Don’t tell anyone but I can eat Lucia’s sauce cold like a tomato soup – yum.
Back at the hotel we packed all our gear in the car then attempted to get out of the carpark. It’s a curvy one with a slippery surface and with everyone in the car except me who was guiding it caused a bit of an issue. You see Pauline couldn’t get the car up the drive. All it did was squeal the wheels halfway up. She reversed and tried from a few angles, but nothing was working. That’s when I realised it was all about weight and made Auntie Sue move to the other side of the car in the front seat. That was enough to get them round the bend and up. The irony being we wouldn’t have had a problem if I’d been sitting there, except that then we probably would have hit the wall or something. We paid $15 for that experience.
We drove out to the airport because we had made prior arrangements to drop the car off there but once we got there we had to fill it with petrol. Since the petrol station was in an opposite direction to where we were going we had to turn around. I was assured by everyone that while I was paying they had sorted the route to get back, but when we got in to the middle of the road Pauline lost her bearings and I had to tell her to turn left, left, left! Then I yelled out “I thought you had sorted out the navigation” in my really deep scary voice and everyone was a little disturbed. But I didn’t quite realise that they thought I was serious and actually upset. It’s funny to me!
We dropped off everyone in departures and then took the car back to the rental agency. Parked it in the parking lot, the guy did a quick once over and then we strolled back to book in. Adelaide airport has a deal with Internode to supply free wireless so the minute I sat down I had the laptop open, plugged in to the power in the business area and was catching up to life. Primarily I was there to show Fiona, Mum and Auntie Sue the letter I’d been going on about during our trip. At opportune moments I used “I hate you, I’ve always hated you!” and “jealouse” all throughout the journey so it was cool to help them understand that I wasn’t just insane. In fact I think I recall saying it at the Whispering Wall. Also “gonna kill you” but that’s a joke in bad taste that only Kelly really gets. Thanks to the internet the time waiting for the plane went past really quickly and before I knew it we were boarding.
To me Adelaide seemed like a Brisbane ten years ago, but with a bit more potential because they have beaches and amazing produce on hand. The construction work going on means that their cbd might have some prettier skyscrapers soon which might help it’s appeal. I may have been looking through rose coloured glasses but their traffic looked much better than ours in that there was less of it. It’s obviously not as exciting as Melbourne or Sydney, but there is still lots to offer. If I was to live in another city in Australia after Brisbane and Melbourne I would probably take Adelaide over Sydney but that says more about me than it does about the city.
What I took away from Adelaide was an appreciation for fresh and local food and that seems to me to be a life changing experience. I’d even say their food is better than Melbourne’s! (Watch me get flamed for that!)

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