Today is for exploring Adelaide but after yesterdays excursion we slept in and also knocked off a wash as one of us woke earlier than the other!
Our hotel is fairly central so we took a short walk up to the museum area. We were advised to see Mortlock Chamber which we discovered was part of the state library. It opened at noon so Mark wandered around the South Australian museum next door, for around 30mins, until it opened. The museum was free and interesting but there was an extra exhibition called Relics though this was for a fee - the item in the entrance was a space invaders arcade machine - does that mean we are relics? How rude?
Anyway back to the Mortlock Chamber which is a very big and impressive reading room in the library.
The moment the library opened students appeared from all angles heading for the numerous desks - maybe working in here is inspirational - personally we would find it distracting and would watch books and people for hours.
We then visited the Rundle Mall area which is one Main Street and lots of little streets and arcades and department stores off it. The place was full of buskers and entertainers - is this usual or just for the fringe? We don’t know. Whatever the reason it was very vibrant and entertaining though we have never walked a pedestrian street before that was sticky - pub floors yes but not streets.
A little way from this was St Peter’s Cathedral (we didn’t enter as it looked like an event was going on) and the Adelaide Central Market which was a hive of activity. Lots of market stalls and food stalls but it was also “sauce day” and there were loads of families pulverising tomatoes and stuff plus stages for cooking demos. It is obviously busy on a Saturday but this took it to an extreme. We almost ate at various cake and food stalls as the temptations were many and great but we ended up with enormous tiramisu slices and smoothies from a couple of the outlets.
Nearby the market was a costume shop which we went in to pick up some masks for the Queen Mary 2 masquerade evening - these will be shown in later blogs. The shop assistant loved our accent, and generally us, so long chats were had in there.
Our final stint was to attend the Adelaide fringe. It is spread over numerous venues but we attended a big venue in Rymill park.
We basically spent around 8hrs here soaking up the atmosphere, eating and drinking and attending 3 shows. Our 1st show was Attenborough and his animals which was a 2 person comedy play with one actor impersonating David Attenborough (and a few animals) and another lady who can mimic all sorts of animals and plants. They recreated excerpts the various shows like the blue planet. It was very funny.
Next up was an open air venue for a show called The Choir of Man which is a show that has been in London’s west end and has sparked off many similar shows. The show revolves around10 guys in a pub and their stories and interests through well known songs. They even grab people from the audience to sing to and before the show they pulled pints from their real life bar on stage for the audience to drink. Great songs, great stories, told in a poetic kind of way, and great fun.
Last show was Dizney in Drag. This was a parody show, taking all your favourite Disney stories and making the women into men, men into women, a hairy godmother (man with a pink dyed beard, pink wig and ball gown and also lots of rude jokes. We know it is not everyone’s cup of tea but we found it a good laugh.
We ended the day walking thru Hindley street again to get back to our hotel. The street was packed with young nightclubbers wearing very little (we are so old lol) though we didn’t like that women “hostesses” were walking the street trying to give other women free stamp entries in order to fill up their clubs with women in order to entice in the fee paying men. We thought we were beyond this but obviously not and as we walked and witnessed this occurring before our eyes we could hear David Attenborough’s voice in our heads describing this human behaviour.
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