Friday, February 21, 2025

Andi, Tory, Aden, and I are settling in nicely to our apartment in Adelaide.

Andi had conference calls starting at 5:30am this morning, so he set up an office in the bedroom while I moved to the living room. I blogged, and then went to the fitness center in our apartment building to workout.

Afterwards, I did school work with Tory and Aden while Andi walked to the Central Market to buy groceries and something to eat for lunch. He returned with the makings for chicken kebobs, veggies, & falafel bowls from Real Falafel for lunch.

Around 1:00pm, the four of us hopped into an Uber for a short 10-minute ride to the Adelaide Zoo. Tory wanted to visit the zoo during our stay, and it’s located right in the heart of Adelaide’s CBD (downtown area called the Central Business District).

We were all surprised how empty the place was, wondering for a minute if it was even open. We literally had the place to ourselves which made it easy to walk from exhibit to exhibit. The first animal area we visited was the Giant Pandas who recently arrived at the Adelaide Zoo in August of 2024.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a panda in real life before. It was very cute, putting on a show as it munched on bamboo shoots in front of a big picture window.

We also saw giraffes and some very cute meerkats chilling in the shade on this hot summer day. Two of the pelicans on display were animal actors in the Australian movie, Storm Boy, which was kind of neat. Such a strange animal; their faces remind me of some of the characters in Beetlejuice.

There was also an Australian animal exhibit with kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, an echidna, and a Tasmanian devil. The Tasmanian devil came close to us in its enclosure, sniffing the air to check us out. Seeing the animal up close confirmed in Andi and I’s minds that we did, in fact, see a Tasmanian devil in the wild when we traveled through Scamander, Tasmania.

On that note, I’m really glad we spent some time in Tasmania because we’ve seen so many of these Australian animals in the wild.

The rest of the zoo was pretty lackluster, to be honest. A lot of the exhibits were empty — either because it was the middle of the afternoon, or there weren’t any animals in them at all.

Next, we walked next door to the Adelaide Botanical Garden. On the way there, we noticed thousands of big bats in the trees making all kinds of noise. Wow! I’d truly never seen so many bats outside of a dark cave. It turns out, these bats are called gray-headed flying foxes (or fruit bats), and there are over 46,000 of them that have made their home in the botanical garden’s trees.

The rest of the botanical garden was a lovely green space with lots of different types of native Australian and exotic plants. Best of all, it was free to wander through the grounds. We saw lots of people picnicking & taking a stroll together.

Tory was getting pretty hot by this point, and starting to growl … which usually means she’s going to get angry soon. Andi told her if she could navigate us to a frozen yogurt shop, he would buy everyone a treat. “Can’t you just do it?” she begged. No, he wanted her to use Google Maps to lead the way there.

So, Tory led the rest of us out of the botanical park, through Rundle Mall, to a place called Yo-Bar. There, we all enjoyed a cool treat after walking around in the heat.

Fro-Yo is a big thing in Australia; there’s several frozen yogurt shops in every decent-sized city, and they’re always busy. Today, this location was packed with kids in school uniforms, so it must be the place to go after school.

By late afternoon, the restaurants around Rundle Mall were crammed with people having drinks after work. Police were busy barricading the street for the weekend night market happening from 5:30pm-10:30pm tonight.

The four of us navigated our way back to our apartment building. Our feet were tired of walking, and Tory’s sandals were giving her a blister.

Back in our apartment, Andi grilled chicken kebobs for dinner on the community rooftop patio while I steamed broccoli & cauliflower, and boiled & mashed potatoes. We ate dinner in our apartment together, and then watched a new-to-us show: Schitt’s Creek.

More to come from Adelaide tomorrow.