In August, I went on my third trip to Australia in less than a year. For this trip we stayed in Adelaide for two weeks instead of hopping around from city to city like we had done on our two previous trips. Clint, Giancarlo, and I flew on Qantas from DFW to Sydney to Adelaide and met up with Rob and Mel. While it was hot every day in the Dallas area, I enjoyed 65 degree days. Got to see a lot of kangaroos and south Australia.
We stayed again at the Hilton Adelaide at Victoria Square, which is very convenient because it is near the city center and an easy walk to shopping, lots of restaurants and bars. It was my first time driving to work every day. I think that I did a good job, no wrecks, or dents in the car, lots of “LOOK AT ME!” moments when we made it home safely each day.
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Adelaide has a very diverse food selection plus a lot of Krispy Kreme Donut stores! The Hilton is right next to China Town with dozens of good restaurants. Our around the world eating on this 2-week trip included:
- Chinese food – twice – I had lots of fried dumplings!
- Italian food
- German food in the German village of Hahndorf
- Vietnamese – 3 times. 2 pho places and banh mi at lunch
- Thai food – fanciest Thai place I have been to!
- Malaysian – spicy soup
- Japanese – great Ramen twice
- Argentinian food – we shared a lot of meat in 1 hour
- Seafood – had fish and chips and lots of beer at Glenelg
- Uyghur food – what do Uyghurs eat? lots of lamb kabobs, noodles and yogurt.
- Algerian paella at the Adelaide Central Market
- Australian Scotch steaks with RAAF at MisMatch Brewery
- Australian Flat White coffees and Tim Tams every day
- Great brekkies at the Hilton
Since I had been there a few times before, on our second day in Australia, I drove all of us out of Adelaide and to the hill country German village of Hahndorf. Very similar to Fredericksburg in Texas, this area was settled by Germans in the 1800s and they still have German traditions. They are in the wine country, making beer and wine, speak German and cook great German food. We had good beers and schnitzels. Giancarlo bought a cool Aussie leather hat and now he looks like Crocodile Dundee.
We spent one of our Saturdays taking an all-day winery tour of the Barossa Valley including Chateau Yaldara, Saltram and Rosenvale wineries. This was a nice trip as we could all sample the wines and not have to worry about driving home on the wrong side of the road. We had a great bus driver who told us a lot about Adelaide, the hills outside of Adelaide and the winemaking business of the Barossa Valley. We got to meet a lot of other wine loving visitors and see a lot of kangaroos.
Rob bought a of of wine on our trip, I hope that he got it all home without breaking
We all had fun practicing our Australian accents and learning Australian terms that are different from the proper English we speak in Texas. With his perfect accent and using terms like these, Clint can pass as an Australian any day: G’Day; Good on ya mate; On ya; No worries mate; brekkie; Maccas; Aussie;
Early in our trip, the 5 of us were drinking beer in the Hilton lobby and watching the Australian Matildas playing in the Women’s World Cup Semifinal game. At the hotel, there was a big Intelligence Officers Conference going on (seems like a strange thing to advertise?). A very big and very drunk guy with SAS on his badge put his hand in front of my face and said, “You, sir, have an angry face”. All that I remember was that he was big and had giant forearms with Maori tattoos on his arms. Good thing for me that his friends sort of took him away from us.
I showed the crew the most hidden bar that I have ever been to. It is down an alley and there are no signs that there is an excellent bourbon bar hidden there. The BD guys had sniffed this out on previous trips and I had been there twice before, but it was still hard to find again. I bought everybody a few good bourbons so that they would owe me drinks for the rest of the trip.
On a Sunday afternoon we took the tram across the street from the Hilton to the end of the line – the beach town of Glenelg. It is only 30 minutes and since we did not have to drive, we drank beer and wine all afternoon at several pubs, walked to the end of the pier to watch fisherman catch a shark and tried out several different pubs.
We met up with Mark, Stu, Josh and Nell at Peter’s house outside of town for a nice dinner. I was designated driver.
