January 28 – Arrive in Adelaide, Exploring the Town

What a great, eclectic day.  We were off the train by 7:30 am and at the hotel by 8:20 or so. Of course, we couldn’t get into our room yet so we dropped off the luggage, headed out for breakfast (breaky in Australian) at the Central Market...

and then proceeded to do some sightseeing.  The weather was perfect for strolling.  We stopped by the World War I War Memorial, 

walked along the Torrens River (it was like glass), 

and wandered through the Botanical Gardens.

Just outside the Botanical Gardens was a large colony of grey headed flying foxes (bats).  They were quite vocal for it being in the middle of the day.  The information board said they were very social, hence all the chatter. 

The Botanical Gardens had a couple of great glass conservatories.

Just outside of one of the observatories was this really incredible sculpture sitting in a pool of water.  It was made of pieces of glass of varying sizes and shapes stuck together.  Very dramatic and gorgeous.  Looked almost like an ocean wave getting ready to break.  Its name was “Cascade.”

The gardens had many statues, fountains, flowers and lovely walks. 

From the botanical gardens we headed off through the streets.  Adelaide has many of the old buildings from the 1800's.  Makes it very interesting to walk the streets.

We stopped at a great Churro and Chocolatier place and pretty decent milk shakes - still not as thick as American shakes, but better than the flavored milk with a little bit of ice cream that seems to be normal.  And their menu featured ice cream sliders and churro “fries”.  Pretty funny.  Looked really yummy.

We found our way to Rundle Street, a main pedestrian mall.  And found four bronze pigs, name was “On the Go”.