We left Alice Springs and flew on to Adelaide, a delightful city of about two million on the southern coast. Our hotel was the Stamford Plaza, part of a developing chain owned by a very rich Singaporean businessman (so said the glossy book in the room about him and his gold-plated houses around the world.) We were scheduled to go on an all-day tour of the Barossa Valley region and a winery there, but as this would have been our only opportunity to see Adelaide, we had arranged to skip this and be on our own for the day. We wandered through the market area and onto the Adelaide Botanic Garden, which was immense and beautiful.
One of the highlights of the Garden was unexpected - The Museum of Economic Botany. It contained row upon row of displays of seeds of every conceivable kind, size and shape, ranging from vials of tiny grass seeds, to an enormous Coco de Mer. Where appropriate, commercial uses of the seeds were noted. There were also separate displays on the history of chocolate and tea, which we found fascinating.
In the evening, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It seemed to go fine until we were ready to order dessert. After 25 minutes of being ignored, I flagged down our waiter. 10 minutes later he returned to take our order. Half an hour after that, we still had nothing. In the meantime, other parties in the restaurant were being attended to. Eventually we got fed up and left, telling the manager why. (As we were doing so, another patron walked up and complained of the same treatment.) This behavior is baffling to me...
Other than the dinner problem, we were very pleased by Adelaide, and wouldn't mind returning there sometime...
© 2002 Steve Lionel - - Home