Adelaide for a few days

We flew to Adelaide for a few days and really did enjoy the city.  Like most of the cities we've visited the old buildings are being used right next to the huge new ones.  Our hotel was right downtown so while we still managed to walk quite a bit it wasn't quite as demanding as some other places (translation:  no hills!).

The name on this building is 'The Austral Stores'.

From the ironwork it certainly reminds one of New Orleans.  If you look closely you see a blue and white sign on the end that says 'Polites'.  We wondered what it meant because they were all over the place.  It turns out a man named Con Polites started from almost nothing and became quite a real estate tycoon.  As he bought more real estate he wanted to put his name on the buildings he owned.  He was rightfully proud of what he had achieved and wanted people to be able to see it.  The company still exists though the man died some years ago.  Here is the story that another blogger unearthed.

On the very corner this building houses a shop selling locally manufactured chocolates.  That's the Haigh's Chocolates part of the story.  I love the sign on the top of the building 'Beehive Corner'.  There has to be a story there too!

Downtown there is a nice pedestrian mall with some interesting statues sprinkled about.

Yes, it is a pig either getting into the litter or putting something in.  You can choose to believe whichever you prefer.

All of the pigs have names:  this is Horatio.  There was more art work but I just liked the pigs.

We took a streetcar out to the beach one day.  It was only a short ride and just a lovely day.

Obviously the beach wasn't crowded!  It was a nice wide beach; the photo was taken from the fishing pier.  Adelaide is a bit inland but the huge bay is protected from the ocean so there was very little wave action.

Southern Australia is, of course, known for wine.  As enthusiastic wine drinkers we thought it only right that we do a winery tour.  We found a local tour operator and set up a tour.  Shriaz and Company is a very small operation but we really enjoyed it.  They do small tours only (max. 6 people) and, in fact, we were the only people on the tour!  The tour is customized to what ever you would like to do so we needed their help!  We've never been on a winery tour before.  So we went to the McLaren Vale area and ended up visiting four very different winerys.  The owner/driver was knowledgable and helpful and was obviously well known at the wineries!  We started the day at the beach again because the tasting rooms (called cellar doors here) don't usually start until 10:00.

We were told this was the first nude beach in Australia.  I can't say one way or the other since there were only a couple people on the beach and they were way far away!  But then we got down to the wine.

There were plenty of vines to be seen and in between them were olive trees.  This is a Mediterranean inspired region where there are all kinds of wineries.  The four we saw were very different.  One, Molly Dooker is quite large and is not difficult to find here in the US.

The other good sized one was Leconfield Wines.  It can be found here but it is mostly their higher priced wines that I've found.  It was about lunch time and the tour operator has made a deal with some of the cellars to provide lunch.  So we just had to buy a nice bottle of wine to go with our cheese and meat plate.  It was really tough!

In the distance you can see a huge tent being erected.  The next weekend the winery was going to host a concert by the American rockers Cyndi Lauper and Blondie!  Ah well, we will be long gone.

The two other winerys were quite small.  In one the men were working on barrels out in the yard.

At another they were planning an Art Festival for the weekend with local artists.  They had quite a collection on the grounds.

The bird was probably 4 or 5 feet long!  Neither of these places export at all. By this time it was about 4 pm and we were ready to head back to the hotel.  So we ended up with a bottle and a half of wine for our room.  Of course it didn't last long!  No worries about shipping wine home.  We were told however that it could easily cost over $200 to ship a case of 12 bottles back to the states.  No thanks!

So having seen Adelaide and the one tiny corner of the wine country it was time for us to move on.  The last stop in Australia is coming up:  Sydney!  Thanks for stopping by.