#20 - Notes from ADL

              

We started out the day with all good intentions on Sunday, heading out early to beat the heat. The short eight block walk to the Wine Center at 8:30 was already hot with the feeling that brutally hot would be the flavor of the day very shortly. 

The Wine Center turned out to be architecturally interesting but as a sightseeing stop about wine, pretty lacking. However, the cafe and wine tasting were the perfect way to spend the morning in a cool place, literally and figuratively. We had our daily flat white, to which I am now addicted and will no doubt be purchasing the Nespresso machine of my dreams, along with a video of how to do the perfect swirl on top, once home.  While sipping coffee, I was writing the blog and then turned the iPad over to Steve to do his usual photos, captions and publishing. 

And of course, since it was now 10:00 AM, I was ready to taste some great wines; we had to start prepping for our trip to Barossa on Monday. This was like no wine tasting I have ever seen from California to British Columbia to Niagara to Tuscany. Maybe this is a new Aussie system we just haven't seen yet. 

The tasting is self service, using a sophisticated card and dispensing equipment system. You give your credit card and in return receive a card, like a hotel room key. You then read the tasting notes and walk around all the wine rack systems. When you find one you fancy, simply put your card in the machine, grab a glass from the shelf, go to the screen above the wine you want to taste, select either a taste, a half glass or a full glass and voila, the wine is dispensed in your glass to enjoy. 

The prices for each wine and taste level are on the screen. The wines go from pedestrian to premium....a taste, which seemed to be maybe one ounce or a shot glass worth, could range from $2.50 to $25.00 for a Penfolds Grange.  And there were 120 wines you could taste.

Back out into the heat we ventured through the Botanic Gardens, which had little shade but were beautiful. We decided to avoid the more typical shopping and to walk to Melbourne Street, about a mile away, where we heard there were some funkier shops with local designers. A total mistake on all accounts. The walk was boring, the sun was merciless and the shops were few with even less open.

By the time we stopped into The Store for a cool drink, I was beyond my limit, ready to pass out, face bright red, what Steve calls my point of no return - I cannot cool down. We cabbed back to the hotel for the car and decided we would finish seeing Adelaide in the comfort of some A/C. 

Suffice it to say, it is probably not worth describing the rest of the day except to say, it was typical Adelaide, as we see it. Not much there, not much happening, and maybe not really worth exploring. We are not sorry we put this on our itinerary, it just probably was a lot more 'bogan' than 'up and coming'. 

OK, so a word about 'bogan'. You can look it up; it's a common word here and it is not a compliment. And since I don't know anyone in Adelaide and hope I don't offend anyone reading this, perhaps I am using it incorrectly as I don't mean it insultingly. But once you google it, I know you, like us, will start using it too! It is way shorter to say than the similar American expressions.

The hippest restaurant in Adelaide was fully booked while we were here. Maybe that was okay since it was only a DeGustation at $225 per person but, the chef gets high accolades. So last night we went to his lower floor and lower-key tapas-style street food bar/resto place, called, of course, Street ADL. 

And while we were enjoying our local bottle of Pinot Noir and some very meat heavy tapas, we started thinking about all of the little Aussie differences that we have encountered. And so today, in no particular order, are our AussieOddities.

•Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King at home) is way more popular than the famous Micky D's. (there are no BKs because the name was already taken back in the 60s).

•We have had or seen at least 50 bottles of wine opened and have not seen even one cork....all screw top cause it really is better although lacks panache.

•We have seen and used at least 50 toilets and only ONE did not have a 1/2 flush. And since we have so few of these in the US, I will explain the self explanatory. It is a toilet where there are two buttons, a small flush for, well, #1 and a big flush for....Makes sense so why don't we have this everywhere?

•Of the many places we have eaten, all of the casual ones (don't think fast food, some of them are quite nice) do not have traditional table service. You have to go to the counter and order. You get a number and when ready they deliver the food. Yes, we have this at home but here it is everywhere. Sometimes the table has a number on it, sometimes they give you one that clicks into a magnetized spot on the table you choose and sometimes even a buzzer like device. 

•Money- they no longer have pennies - wish we would do that - but maybe it is because the smaller the denomination of the coin, the larger and heavier the coin seems to be. 

                                         Twenty cent coin, next $1 and $2 gold coins

•Trash- they do have mandatory recycling and every house we have seen all over the country so far has the same exact trash cans, weird.

•Drinks- they drink lemon,lime,bitters which we never heard of and now love, anyone want to bring a new item to the States? Really, it would be a hit. They love, as do we, Ginger Beer and have many brands including Diet Bunderberg, our fave. They also have more flavors of milk than you have ever seen, including coffee. And the most surprising fact- they have hundreds of beers everywhere, but NO FOSTERS!!!!!!!

•Cars - mostly sedans, some station wagons including a great Holden model but not a lot of SUVs, which they call UTEs.

•Technology- they have pretty slow internet as compared to at home, very few Internet cafes, hotels do not usually have free wifi, and the computers in airports and store checkouts take forever to move from screen to screen… but, every, really, every restaurant has wireless credit card payment at your table, and they all have credit cards with chips and pins...only the American tourists have to still sign which confounds them.

•No one jaywalks and no one crosses before the signal says to, even when it is 42C outside and no cars coming in either direction. And every light has a walk signal and at some intersections, the cross is All Ways, right, left and diagonal. 

So as we continue on to our last couple of stops in Australia, we hope to keep discovering more. Today we head to Barossa for a two night stay on a farm and a lot of good food and good wine, we hope. We should have only one more day of unrelenting heat and then finally get the temps all of the research we did promised. A week or so ago, we sent some of our sweaters home, wanting to travel lighter and being unable to imagine it could really get cold. A peek at the temps in New Zealand has clearly revealed this may have been a bad decision or, as I am more inclined to say, a new shopportunity.