Flying High in Adelaide

A visit to Adelaide doesn’t turn up on your average backpacker’s itinerary while travelling Oz, and it probably would not have on ours either except for the fact that I have family there that I rarely get to see. I was really excited to go visit my family but we pretty much had little to no expectations about the city itself. I actually didn’t know too much about Adelaide other that it was near wine country…….so at least there would be something to do when not visiting with the fam lol. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised to see what a beautiful city Adelaide was with a myriad of parks and gardens sprinkled across the city, the Adelaide hills just minutes outside the city and a reasonable shopping and nightlife I would say it’s worth a visit (albeit maybe a sort one with some many other great Oz locations to choose from)

Looking down the river in city centre Adelaide

After an epic sleep-in following our 22 hour drive the day before, we started our visit with my cousin coffee from his local coffee shop and then a walk down the Rundle mall  (aka not actually a mall but street lined with many many shops) and then breakfast at the Belgian Beer café. After checking out more of the city we jumped in my cousin’s car and headed for the hills to visit and have dinner with my Uncle, his wife and another one of my cousins at their house just outside the city. It had been about 5 years + since our last visit so it was great to catch up again. On top of the great company, they also spoiled us with the biggest, most delicious home cooked meal that we have had in months. On top of your typical BBQ fare we also got to sample our first kangaroo and Jonny got a proper lesson on how to de-shell a prawn from an expert.  After dinner we headed back into the city to sample some of the local nightlife which ended with late night meat pies, a real Aussie favorite, and another epic sleep in.

The next morning after some more coffee from the local spot we headed out to the Glenelg beach to stroll around and have breakfast. We spent the better part of the day there walking out on the pier and playing mini golf before heading back to the city grabbing quick dinner and drinks with some of my cousin’s buddies and then calling it a night early. With my cousin at work the next day Jonny and I took it pretty easy just exploring some more of the city and the surrounding parks and sampling some of the local wines.

One of the local Adelaide Hills wineries

View of their vineyard

The next day was cousin was able to take off and took us for what hands down is probably one of the coolest things we have done on this trip so far – acrobatic flying. Tom is an accomplished pilot in the Australia military and while we is stationed in relatively sleepy Adelaide he has taken on a weekend job doing acrobatic flying sessions and we so generously offered to treat us to a ride. The weather wasn't the greatest in the morning so we decided to go out in the afternoon so instead we decided to go for a ride through the hills and stop at a winery. Tom obviously did not sample the wine since we was going to be flying later but Jonny and I did a tasting…… probably what we needed in order to loosen up for what was to come. After the wine we headed to the airport that we would be flying from and Tom showed us the plane we would be going up in – a TINY little 2-seater thing, including the pilot, called a Super Decathlon.  My old family van was bigger than this thing I swear! After Jonny and Tom pushed it out of the hanger onto the tarmac……yes I said pushed… Tom started doing all the safety checks and giving us the safety briefing. Jonny was going first since I still wasn't sure if I was going to go up or not (the whole nervous flyer thing was working against me).

Our ride for the day...eeek!

The boys pushing the plane out of the hanger

Goose??....nope Jonny

After being cleared for take-off they headed out for a 45min ride of Jonny’s life.  They did all kinds of crazy things….flying inverted, stall turns, went up to 4G, held at zero gravity, etc. – right up until  1 more trick would set Jonny into air sickness bag territory and then they headed back.  After their ride we were a bit short on time so there wouldn't be time to do anything acrobatic flight, which actually worked out perfectly for me, so I went for a nice, quick, totally upright flight above the city as we were edging on sunset – really an amazing day!

My turn in the back seat

Sun setting over Adelaide from the sky

After flying we headed back to my uncle’s house for another visit and wonderful home cooked meal of roast beef, since we won’t be seeing much of that in India where we are off too next. It was our last night in Adelaide but we arranged to meet again one more time for lunch the next day before we had to head off to the airport to fly back to Sydney so we held off on the goodbye’s until lunch. Up next a quick weekend in Sydney before we head off to – INDIA!

OOO_Talia