Radelaide, roos, and Liana!

Quicker stats for my longer update this round:

• 5 movies watched (Captain Marvel was decent and the French Film Festival has begun)
• 3 books read
• 2 kangaroos petted
• at least 9 pies eaten (it was a great week)

(Firstly, I’m writing this from my apartment for the first time! I FINALLY have working internet. This is a major event in my life, so let me enjoy this moment. Sweet sweet internet.)

Went on my first domestic trip: to visit Adelaide, in South Australia. It’s got this sweet state logo.

Justin & Joe were in town and so I followed them to see Justin’s hometown. An 8 hr drive (same as Sydney) or a 1 hr flight. Been a while since I’ve been on Qantas and they had this stellar new feature, where 1) free plane wi-fi and 2) they note your seat number and can give you a simulated interactive view of what you’re flying over with clickable highlights! This is a dream I’ve always wondered about since I love the window seat. I wished the flight was longer so I could have more time to explore what we were flying over!

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Adelaide is a wonderful land of koalas (literally that live across the street from Justin) and meat pies (the proper amount I expected to find.. not the must-seek-out amounts in Melbourne). Even tried the Adelaide special, a pie floater (meat pie drowned in a thick pea soup).

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We hit the ground running and had so much stellar food (pies, fresh pasta, tasty Malaysian) I didn’t have a moment of hunger the entire trip.

We also went to see wildlife, at a nearby animal park. So many awesome animals roaming about (and one ran right thru my legs!) and you could feed and pet them too! After playing Crash Bandicoot back in the day, I finally got to meet a real bandicoot. Very fluffy and cute. Kind of difficult to distinguish between a potoroo but I think we were able to.

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The koala’s get tired after too much human contact so we missed the koala hold time but still got to see quite a few up close. Love their furry ears and how they wedge themselves into a branch corner and just nap all day. A good life.

SO many kangaroos too! They even kick when they’re “relaxing” on the grass, or it’s leftover bounces or something, but I kept a safe distance and only pet their backs. I’ve seen the video of them fighting.

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Adelaide hosts a ton of festivals and I was there during their busy season when the Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Fringe and WOMADelaide were all ongoing. They’re each awesome festivals featuring art, music and interesting events each year. There are oodles of free events too. We went to a show and enjoyed lots of other features (light projections and all the associated food too).

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Justin’s favorite food truck only is at this yearly festival, a poffertjes stand (Dutch pancakes). We went back here a few times since these are SO tasty. Mini pancakes with rum butter, lemon and powdered sugar. A perfect snack food between shows. Seriously, no pictures can capture how tasty these snacks were. We stopped sharing and each were getting a plate by the end.

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Visited lots of friends (and their adorable babies) and even was able to squeeze in an old high school mate that I hadn’t seen in 20 years! We were too busy catching up that I forgot to take a picture. Ha. Next time!

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The beaches in Adelaide were lovely and super clean! The water was chilly but we braved them and dipped in and enjoyed some beach time. Saw the prettiest beach shower ever and we think we figured it out but it was pretty artsy so we couldn’t tell if we controlled it ever but we did manage to turn it on. It was a sculpture of its own!

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I got the full food tour of local snacks: all of which were yummy and I hope I can find outside of South Australia (I think for most I can):

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Back in Melbourne went straight to another beach and caught up with the niblings (little niece/nephews/cousin’s kids is getting jumbled into this term) and had a fish and chip feast. Fish n chip menus have several items I’ve never heard of before (all items deep fried):

• Corn jack – spring roll-esque item filled with cream corn (hot lava alert)
• Chiko roll – I haven’t been able to discern it from a spring roll, which is also on the menu so I’m considering it as spring roll #2
• Dim sim – previously covered dim sum lite (larger than average shui mai), battered
• Dippy Vienna Dog aka Battered Sav – hot dog dipped in batter
• Crumbed sausage – similar to above but crumb fried (ala Shake and Bake)
• Burger in batter – I assume it’s just the patty in batter, but now I’ll imagine it as an entire burger on a stick, dipped in batter instead. It’ll remain a mystery until I try one.
• Sea Shanty – ??

This beach was chillier but still super clear out and nice just playing in the sand with the kiddos.

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Before I knew it, I had my next visitor: Liana! YAYYY! Sister’s in town only for a few days so we had to hit the ground running and eat our way thru town.

Took her straight to the South Melbourne Market to eat pies and pastries. We got her a dimmy (dim sim) and fancy fancy cakes. Of course more Malaysian food and some quality family time too.

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We both love a good book store so we went in at least four of those and checked out the libraries. She bought me my first physical book (The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle), which I’m pretty excited about since I didn’t pack any and have been tired of reading only e-books since I’ve arrived.

Enjoyed showing my sister around my new haunts, and having an extra person to eat with so we can try double the items! We most definitely did that.

Now I get to give the local libraries a break from my patronage and just chill out at my place a bit more. I could hear the cars racing every day this week since the Melbourne Grand Prix is just nearby. Even saw a few fighter jets fly by today in their closing ceremony today. Kind of hard to miss those.

Until next time! I’ll leave you with my fav Aussie shortened words so far, found at a grocery store. I can’t say I’ve actually heard someone say “spag bol” instead of spaghetti bolognese but I’ll be keeping my ears open.