Lovely Adelaide

Because I had two days of tennis, I actually had limited time to see the sights in Adelaide. Lucklily, the tour leaders from our great ocean road adventure gave us a good overview on the way in and a couple of tips for what to see. I just wanted to give you a few highlights of my 1 day of no-tennis sightseeing in lovely Adelaide.

First thing I noticed about the city is that it has a crazy mixture of old and new architecture, often with vintage buildings modernized for contemporary uses.

A perfect example of this is the Adelaide Marriott where I stayed. It is a fabulous, brand new hotel built into/over the city’s old main post office building. This is pictured in the first photo below, followed by a random deco era building surrounded by a modern office building and the Adelaide arcade, which is part of the “mall’. The Rundle Mall is a multi block street that is closed to traffic and houses many independent, local stores as well as international chains (hello the ubiquitous Sephora, Nike, Addidas, and Foot Locker!) The mall was right in center of the city and a real delight to walk through.

I added a snap of one of the many arcades radiating off the Main Street below. Some of these were ultra Modern, while others, like this one, maintained its vintage character. All had a mixture of stores, coffees shops, galleries, and restaurants. Very beautiful!

I also walked the botanical gardens. Adelaide is completely surrounded by green space, and the large gardens are part of this greenway. It was a great way to spend a very hot morning. The plant life was astounding. A huge variety of local and exotic species. Here are a few examples:

And the birds are nuts! The beaks and claws on that first one are a little intimidating, the pigeons have Mohawks, and I’m not even sure what going on with that purple one who is wearing sunglasses….

More to come from Melbourne, where I will spend the next week eating, exploring, and watching the tennis!