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This being our one full day in Adelaide, I suggested to the Tubby one we ought to get a Daytrip pass, thus, we can travel all about until the sun goes down. Which is about 5pm, so we'd best get a move on if we wanted a good return on our investment.
| 7:48am | The blazing of sunlight through both the main and bathroom windows was sufficient to wake me from my sleeping slumber. (Which sounds a bit redundant, I must admit.) |
| 8:27am | After seeing countless (well, really just 15-20) ads for Qantas frequent flyer stuff, I finally convinced Tubby that golly, maybe we should sign up, given we'll have been on something like 8 or more flights before we left, and with any luck, we could get credits for those flights even as we're amidst the travel. |
| 8:31am | Excellent: "Win a Qantas Ticket for Life! If you join between 1 June 2004 and 31 July 2004, you'll receive 1000 points plus one entry in the draw to win a AUD$5000 Qantas travel voucher every year for the rest of your life!" |
| 8:34am | Ooh, the best part: "Payment Details: For applicants resident outside of Australia and New Zealand, the joining fee is waived." |
| 8:35am | The big guy is now a member. Big whoop. |
| 8:41am | Well, I think we just surpassed "the best part"... we can earn points for all travel up to 30 days prior to enrollment, and given this trip has been underway for only 15 days, I think we're good. And yes, this also means Tubby is still glued to his stupid chair. Humans! |
| 9:01am | At long last, we're out the door and off to spend AU$6.20 for an all-day wandering transit pass -- bargain! |
| 9:23am | Because I have all sorts of luck when flying solo, I bounded up to the trolley (well, they call it a "tram" in brochures) as it was arriving at Victoria Square. So, I loaded up. |
| 9:26am | We purchased a Daytrip pass -- ride any tram/trolley, train, or bus until 4:30am tomorrow, for the princely sum of AU$6.20 -- about US$4.50. Yea! |
| 9:52am | Our trolley, #380, arrived on Jetty Road, which soon will dump us off at the end of the line. We managed to pass by a shop or two, and as we soon would find, Glenelg isn't just a cool moniker, it's this city's name. |
| 9:57am | And quick as that, #380 was off to drag more passengers (locals and tourists alike) along the same route. |
| 10:01am | We had a look about Glenelg, and wandered back slowly along Jetty Road (with a brief detour down Moseley Street, where we bumped into a really purple car), to catch a trolley back to town and continue the adventure. |
| 10:27am | And #358 pulls up to whisk us away. (I was hoping for .357, but that didn't work out.) |
| 10:31am | Trolley signs: the first offers a mobile phone to borrow to call phone, arrange a ride, etc., from the trolley -- very cool -- and the second sign offers some good advice. |
| 10:51am | We're back in Victoria Square, and begin making our way over to the train station, after wading through some Greenpeace types. |
| 11:49am | Upon arriving at the train station, we found we had lots of time
to kill. After much wandering, and suffering through a Coke, our |
| 12:19pm | We arrived in Port Adelaide and managed to get our bearings sorted out enough to figure out which way to the water and sights to be sighted. |
| 12:21pm | Sorta clever, I thought. |
| 12:38pm | If you don't want to look across the street to the Walk/Don't Walk thing, you don't have to here in Port Adelaide. But whilst waiting, a neat truck went by. |
| 12:56pm | We arrived too early back to the train platform, but took a gander over to the work crew there, to find work crews everywhere have a couple of blokes holding up shovels, figuratively speaking. (One guy waiting for the train commented he once had to take a 4-hour safety class for how to properly use a shovel, which is when he realized working for the road department wasn't for him.) |
| 12:57pm | The railroads in Australia had a number of different gauge -- track widths -- up until 1995. (The standard-railroad gauge project started in 1982.) In places, like this one apparently, there's still evidence of the diversity with rails to accommodate three different wheel gauges.. |
| 1:23pm | Exactly 13 minutes behind scheduled, we hopped the train to Semaphore (only two more stops down, but a pretty healthy walk, I assure you). |
| 2:32pm | Enough of that, we headed back to the train station to wait for our chariot to whisk us back to town. As I waited, I reflected on the two grammatical blunders I found, at least by American English standards: |
| 2:56pm | The train arrived on time, and we were off! |
| 3:10pm | Much faster than you'd expect 14 train stations and stops to go by, we were back in Adelaide, and unloading to wander the streets. |
| 3:14pm | Well, street-wandering is only so interesting, so we eventually found ourselves seeking another activity. |
| 3:25pm | A coach trip to the Barossa Valley served as just such an activity, and we were off. |
| 5:41pm | At the end of the trip, we were dumped back off at the hotel to do much of nothing. |
| 6:37pm | Taking an escape for the evening meal, we bowed out to Hog's Breath, which tended to proclaim, "Hog's breath is better than no breath at all." We couldn't argue that, the food was pretty, good, even if it took forever and a day to get the check. By the end, Tubby even didn't bother to mention the missing bacon from his burger was still on the check; I bet that's why it took so long to get the check -- he'd get impatient enough to not make a stink about it. |
| 8:08pm | The bill was settled (the phantom bacon amongst it), and we popped by Cole's to restock the Diet Pepsi, only to find they were closed. Apparently "Open until midnight Mon-Sat" doesn't apply, and they closed at 8pm. Tomorrow they won't open until 11am, which does us little good given our train departs the station at 10am. |
| 8:21pm | We're back in the room, writing updates, emails, and biting commentary about bacon. Or the lack thereof. |
| 9:58pm | I got all excited for nothing. The new mail that just came through was spam mail. But then again, who from home would be sending me mail at 5:30am? No one I know really even knows that time exists, with few exceptions. |
| 10:12pm | Okay, I've splashed about in the tub, the water rolled off my back as you'd expect it to roll off a duck's back, and I'm off to bed. Nighty-night. |