Weather wise, anyway. The weatherman has been wrong every day; today it was sunny and 70.

Had a nice morning walk along the pedestrian street and arrived at the botanical gardens on time to have a watch of demolition equipment next door. I felt like a kid, watching the crew knock down an old hospital.

The tour was spectacular. This garden in particular had a lot of native plant species, which is good because it was all new to me. I spent several hours there.

After some lunch, another state library. Nothing like the one in Melbourne, but nice in its own way.

At the South Australia museum, finally a good display of aboriginal history and artifacts. The best in Australia it’s been said. I believe it. The curator had taken a lot of time to make the displays easy to understand.

That’s it really. I found the central post office and mailed a card, and bought and cooked a healthy meal.

Tomorrow a free walking tour and the art gallery.

Night!

The trip to, and through, and from both of today’s airports went great.

However…the hostel I chose is a dump. Oh, man, how hard I want to check out and go someplace else.

I’m not gonna, tho. I’m settled in and what the hell, it’s only for 3 days. There’s tea and coffee and the shower is hot.

Adelaide is a lot like Portland. The downtown area is smaller, and a free bus makes sightseeing effortless. The people are pretty friendly too.

Today I saw a Japanese garden, an aboriginal art gallery, the beach, a church, found a thrift shop, the parliament building, and I took a long walk.

Tomorrow I’ll take it easier.

So, earlier, when I was all excited about free pancakes, I didn’t realize something rather major. Pancakes once in a while are a treat; pancakes every day are awful.

After a lovely breakfast of not pancakes, I just walked around today with no agenda. After a bit of tram riding, I found a nice park with a bunch of Japanese tourists milling around. They must know something, I thought, and followed them to some neat stuff. It continued to be sunny, so I wandered around the park. There was a model village and conservatory, some fountains and such.

I managed to find more free stuff to do as well. A couple of galleries of aboriginal art were within walking distance. You might not believe how much money they were asking for that stuff. A lot, is all I know. The best was the state library. Man, it’s great! Such a neat exhibit of all their most famous and old books. Since the region was the capitol, they got some doozies here. I won’t bore you, but they got stuff as good as the Morgan library in NYC, and that’s saying something. Also Ned Kelly’s armor was there. He’s a famous bank robber and murderer. Very popular for some reason.

I finally got out to the docklands on the tram.

It’s an area for the rich and boring. One apartment building I saw went for 10,000 a month. Nice, tho.

Dinner was Japanese. Pretty good and filling for 10 bucks. That’s a good deal in Melbourne.

On to Adelaide tomorrow. I have no idea what there is to do there.

🤩

Today was the day I tried not to spend any of my budgeted money because I bought expensive insoles. Argh. Darn my feet, anyway.

Mission accomplished. Yesterday I skipped a museum so at least I had coffee money, and leftovers for dinner. Luckily, all my daily activities didn’t cost anything but footsteps.

The country’s capitol was here in Melbourne for a few years so they have a very nice capitol building to show for it. The guide was lucky to have a small group, and we got lots of extra time in the rooms too.

It is great to see a parliament building that has never been bombed, or burned, or torn down in a revolution. All original finishes and woodwork.

After lunch, the treasury. Gold was discovered here just after the area was granted independence from New South Wales. Very convenient timing. Melbourne the city grew like crazy. The area under settlement went from a European population of zero to 5 million in less than 200 years. That’s nuts! The building itself is partly now a museum.

Of course I went in some churches too.

Its chilly here now, so again I went home early to watch a move before dinner. Now I’m hooked on Peaky Blinders, thanks a lot Netflix.

After dinner I roamed around the Japanese dollar store. So much crap, and so much more awesome than the dollar store junk we have at home. Not really, but it’s cuter.

Good night, beautiful people