Adelaide

We had a lovely, sunny, warm day with no humidity, just nice to be out in it. The city is the driest, southernmost capital on the driest continent in the world according to the driver of our coach as we headed into Adelaide. The port of Adelaide is probably 20 miles from the city so it took about 40 minutes to get into town. At the port we had to run the gauntlet of opal dealers just to get outside to where the buses were waiting. Our driver gave us a running commentary of all the attractions as we made our way into the main part of town. For those of you who are in Edinburgh you can feel quite comforted that Adelaide is bringing back trams. It was a very nice city, wide streets, well planned with nice parks but it was very dry and the grass was brown in most areas. The people were very helpful like we have seen in other Australian cities. Morag was struck with the fact that despite the hot climate the business men were dressed in long-sleeved shirts with ties. While it was very nice, Adelaide was not our favorite city. We walked around the center, then even further to the city market, took a bus ride around the main district, all very nice and then we came home. When we sailed away there was a lot of people waiting to wave goodbye to us. This was the first time Queen Victoria had been to Adelaide and it made the local television news. At 7:00 that evening we went to a classical piano concert by an internationally known musician from Shanghai who played some of his own works and a couple of pieces by Chopin. His name is Tian but I am not sure of his complete name. Now we have two days at sea before we stop at Albany in West Australia. The seas are calm but it's a bit breezy making it cool on deck. More to come after Albany.