Day 41 - Tuesday Feb 7, Adelaide, Australia

Adelaide photos

position at 7:30 am: S34:46:39 latitude E138:28:54 longitude (Adelaide, Australia)
temperature: 58F, 80% humidity, sunny, slight breeze
distance since FLL: 14,461 miles

We awoke to very calm seas this morning. It was very pleasant after the bouncing around we had done yesterday. It calmed down around 2-3 in the morning and it made Debbie want to sleep-in. But about 7am, we heard music coming in from the outside. We were being entertained by a trio on the second floor balcony of the terminal building as we were docking. They sang Australian folk songs and were quite good, and it was a very nice welcome for us. Clay taped a couple of songs to retain the flavor of the entertainment. We are docked port-side and the gangway is on deck 5.

A little note on the Super Bowl. It was scheduled to be shown Monday, yesterday, at 10:30 am, but it was not. They had a failure in the ESPN transponder and could not get it fixed over the weekend. Instead, they displayed an NFL internet site that showed graphic displays of the plays in real time. Not exactly the same as seeing it on TV. They requested that their port agent in Adelaide tape it so maybe it will be shown some time in the next 2 sea days. Jamie announced just after 6pm that he did have the game and it would be played starting tonight in 2 parts on 2 channels on TV.
So, today we are docked at the Outer Harbour of Adelaide on LeFevre Peninsula in Gulf St. Vincent. It is about 20km from Adelaide and about 10km from Port Adelaide. There is nothing here but the terminal building. So, RSSC is providing free shuttle buses for the 30 minute ride into Adelaide. In the terminal building our warm South Australian welcome continued with a few shops and tourism volunteers offering help and advice and maps and free opals. Debbie rooted into the wheelbarrow of rocks they had there from Coober Peedy and pulled out a raw opal. They gave it to her! And, then they gave her a free kangaroo stick pin with an opal and gave Clay a raw opal of his own. Wow! Welcome to SA! You could hardly get anyone to tell you anything in Sydney and Melbourne without really trying and that included people working in visitors' centers! You could get information from people like bus drivers who were captive. But, here in Adelaide the people have been very friendly and very free to offer to help if they saw you with a map. Quick to welcome you when they heard your accent and ready to ask you where you were from, how long you were here, where you had been, where you were going, etc. We did have another anti-Bush bus encounter here. It is sad when the first thing people say when they learn you are American, is what were you people thinking when you elected him last time around? No answers here. A man sat opposite us on the free 99C bus and said, "yawn halldy." Debbie thought about it a moment, couldn't decide what language he was speaking anyway, and then said, "pardon?" He gave a big smile and enunciated, "You on holiday?" Laughs all around and we replied, yes. Then he said he used to like Americans, but "your president!"
The sun shone brightly all day, but it hovered around 80 degrees with low humidity and a pleasant constant breeze. So, it was a good day for wandering. That is mostly what we did. We got on the shuttle bus around 9am and arrived at Bumblebee Corner in downtown Adelaide about 9:45am. Here with so many people to help we really did not need any. The downtown area is easily laid out in a grid pattern. There are 2 well-marked free buses running a circuit around and there are few attractions other than the city's many squares, parks and historic buildings. We visited the Rundle Mall (a pedestrian shopping street), the Migration Museum, South Australia Museum, SA Art Gallery, and Tandanya (which was closed except for the noon didgeridoo show that we did not attend), the Central Market and Chinatown. We ate a pizza and Clay had a West End Draught and a Bacio gelato. They had a lot of Italian restaurants here. Debbie bought a small, framed Aboriginal painting on bone of a platypus. There is a wall for art from our travels and this will fit nicely there. We stopped at Woolworth's and stocked up on Debbie's favorite Aussie candies; Violet Crumbles and 2 new ones, Malteasers and Polly Waffle. Clay got some new beers; a Carlton Draught, Toohey's Extra Dry and Cooper's Lager. We got back on a bus that left about 4:40pm and were in the cabin by 5:30pm. We sat out on the deck and unwound with cold drinks and then it was dinner time.

It is Country Club Casual tonight. We did not see much to tempt us to Compass Rose so it may be Pasta e Basta again. We sail at 11pm tonight, so we slept through this morning's sail in and we will likely sleep through tonight's sail out. We are keeping our fingers crossed for smooth sailing again as we spend the next 2 days crossing the Great Australian Bight, which sounds unusually ominous!

We returned to LaVeranda for Pasta e Basta and ate exactly what we did last night, minus the soup, plus cherries flambe. Also, had a California Fume Blanc instead of Australian Viognier. It was just as good. Maybe better because we ate it without hanging onto the table for dear life! There was a full house in there tonight vs. the half-dozen tables of last night. When we left there was a line waiting for seats. We got another drawing tonight, of the Yarra River skyline in Melbourne. We were strolling the ship this evening and there are three sketches framed on decks 9 and 10 each by this same person from 2004.

Tonight we change the clocks back by half an hour, last night we did the same and tomorrow night we move them back another hour. That is all the time changes for this segment, 2 hours in 3 days!
Debbie sneaked in a laundry run after dinner. She found no one doing laundry as she returned from dinner and thought it would be good to get the laundry out of the way while the ship was docked.

New factoid: a group of kangaroos is a MOB.

Adelaide photos