Adelaide, City Of The Future

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Cosplayers in Adelaide

I land in Adelaide and board a bus with most of our Fam Trip Team (5 travellers got waylaid in Sydney due to quarantine and had to take a later flight) and we scoot down to the seaside suburb of Glenelg (I couldn’t pronounce it to this day, but note it’s an palindrome).

It was a perfect spot to “stop moving”. That is, if you couldn’t hit a hotel/shower after a 14 hour flight, Glenelg was a nice calming place to find yourself in. It reminded me a lot of Coco Beach, Florida for some reason. If Coco Beach was upscaled a tick. I could have spent the day, if we had the time. I treated myself to an ice cream and noted that it was nearly $5 for a single scoop. Odd. I didn’t think anything more of it, putting it down to a toursity trap kind of pricing.

Back on the bus, we return to the airport to grab the remaining agents and head into Adelaide for our city tour.

It’s a remarkable city. The core is surrounded by a protected, nearly square green belt. Of course on the other side of this green belt is suburban sprawl, but we didn’t get to see much of it. If David Miller had gone to bed with Vancouver, the baby result would have been Adelaide: liberal, thought out and green. The LRT that runs through the core of the city down to the beach is free to ride within the city centre. The city centre itself has more bike lanes I’ve ever seen. I’ve not seen so many trees in a city other than Central Park.

Even though the city was established in 1836, the streets are very wide and unlike it’s UK motherland, laid out on a grid. Col. Light, who designed the city, was fairly unpopular with his views when he implemented them, but time has proven him right.

It was a great place to start the trip. However, I started to notice the prices of Australia: uncomfortably high. I wandered into a corner shop for a 475ml Diet Coke and left $4.50 lighter. Yeah. Things are expensive in Oz. But the standard of living is high too. I noted on a news article that the average electrician makes over $80K a year. So it balances itself out, but pity the poor tourist!

After the bus tour we finally meet all together in the lobby of our hotel: 7 US Agents, 9 Canadian, (3 guys – it was like a Hen Party but without the alcohol), full spectrum of ages.

Our first Fam Trip obligation was a visit to the Adelaide Hilton for a hotel inspection and dinner. The rooms were typical newly reno-ed Hilton rooms (but weirdly without art) and the lobby looked like it was pulled from the set of the Carol Burnett Show. Dinner was wine-filled and meat smacked. Delicious! I spent most of the evening talking to the Groups manager from the hotel and though I might have been super tired, we laughed a lot.

That night, when I climbed into bed, I realized that this was the first mattress I was sleeping on in over 48 hours. I don’t remember pulling the sheets up around my shoulders…

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