Namesake

Location: Adelaide, Australia

Introduction:

Our daughter’s name was largely influenced by our fondness for the city of Adelaide. It was our third visit here and her first. In the past, it was our home base for visiting the local wine regions. This time was different as we viewed the city from a child’s eyes and we liked what we saw over three days as we acclimated to the 13.5-hour time change from back home. We left Florida in late Spring and arrived in Australia in late Autumn resulting in cooler temperatures and reduced daylight hours.

Sights Visited:

Cleland Wildlife Park provided a wonderfully engaging experience with Australia’s indigenous animals. Our daughter was able to pet and feed numerous free-roaming kangaroos, wallabies, emus and various birds. She was able to pet a couple of koalas and get close to wombats, dingoes and more. The park is located up in Adelaide Hills providing a panoramic view of the city and bay beyond. This destination is highly recommended for animal lovers.

Woodhouse Adventure Park fell short of our expectations as it’s main attraction, the tube slide, was closed on the day of our visit. It’s located on a nice sprawling property with some climbing walls, a large labyrinth maze and disc golf.

Play:

The impressive Princess Elizabeth Playground was just across the street from our apartment. It included a two-story slide, sand-pit, trampolines and much more. We made it our first stop after checking into our flat.

Glenthorne National Park Adventure Playground is twenty minutes from the city center and unique in its use of natural wood for most of the activities. This invites kids to test their abilities to climb and balance providing lots of fun. It’s another winner.

The South Australian Museum bills itself as having something for everyone and it certainly does. Our daughter found several exhibits that fascinated her on fossils, animal skeletons, meteorites and more. They have a cool hands-on discovery room but it’s only open for a few hours each day and we arrived too late. No matter, while our daughter kept saying: “Okay, let’s go the gift shop”, she would keep getting distracted by an exhibit on the way and we almost closed the place.

Accommodations:

We used Airbnb for a 2-bedroom apartment at 60 South Terrace in the city. The host was super responsive. Upon arrival, we found that the lockbox had been vandalized and she met us fifteen minutes later at a local coffee shop with a backup set of keys. The place was very clean and comfortable. It even included a small playroom which thrilled our daughter. The HVAC system worked well. The Wi-Fi was very good. There was a washer and dryer. All of the cabinets were labeled to indicate their contents. We found this to be especially helpful. It included a Lavazza Mio espresso machine with pods to provide our caffeine fix each morning. The parking arrangement was a little challenging as it’s the first time we ever used a private lift to self-park. Our large SUV just barely squeezed in.

Transportation:

It took us four flights from Jacksonville to get to Adelaide using points on United (JAX-IAH-SFO-MEL-ADL). This resulted in about 24 hours combined in the air to reach our destination. Upon landing, we picked up an Isuzu mu-X 4×4 SUV from Avis. We needed a four-wheel drive for our next destination. They drive on the left-hand side of the road in Australia and the steering wheel is on the right-hand side of the vehicle. We brought a booster seat from home for Adelaide as we’ve been disappointed in the car seats that we’ve rented in the past. The SUV used diesel fuel which cost $5.65 U.S. per gallon.

Shout-Out:

It took a while to clear immigration and customs upon our arrival in Melbourne, Australia and we still had to catch a flight to Adelaide on Virgin Australia in a different terminal. Our carry-on luggage had to be checked and the self-service kiosk wouldn’t issue luggage tags as our tickets were booked through United. Luckily, we found a Virgin Australia agent who saved the day and got us checked in just under their deadline. Thank you, Virgin Australia, for the great personal service!

For Your Amusement:

We need one of these labels for our mailbox back home.

Next Up: Kangaroo Island