May 14, 2016
Last night was pretty cold, we woke up and it felt like we had woken up outside. Tim said it felt like we had been camping last night. After some examination of the air conditioner, we realized that it’s also a heater! Oh well, now we know that air conditioners in Australia are different than the ones in Asia (which don’t turn into heaters).
We checked out of the motel around 10am and went to the main attraction in Mount Gambier, a crater lake called, Blue Lake. The lake was a lot larger than I thought it would be. During different times of the year, the colour of the lake changes. They say in May it’s more of a grey blue but some parts of the year it can become a bright and vibrant blue.
After Blue Lake we headed to Mount Gambier’s main street, called Commercial Street, for breakfast. Jessica, suggested a bakery in town but when we got there, it looked like the bakery had shut down so we walked around to see what else there was. We walked down Commercial Street a bit more and saw a building that said “OK Pie Shop”. We were intrigued by their modest name and were up for trying more Australian meat pies. OK Pies was a bakery that sold pies, pastries, and coffee. We shared a beef & mushroom pie and a curry beef pie. Both were quite tasty, I’m actually enjoying them quite a bit. The pies were better than the ones in Port Campbell because I think OK pies actually makes their pies in house.
After lunch we set out on our way towards Adelaide. It was about 400km to get to Jess and Robin’s townhouse in Adelaide. The drive was a fairly easy and non-eventful drive. There’s not much to see on the way there besides seeing lots of cow and sheep farms and wineries. Apparently South Australia is wine country. I saw some names that I recognize – like Penfolds and Lindeman’s. The majority of the highway is one lane, with some segments that are two lanes for passing (or overtaking as they say here). There are a lot of signs that say “Drowsy Drivers Die” – we must have seen over 20 of them.
We got into Adelaide around 3:30pm and passed by Jess and Robin’s townhouse to see where it was. They were at a conference today so they weren’t home yet. All we knew was that they would be home before dinner since they wanted to change after the conference ended before heading out for the closing dinner. We decided to get something to eat and then come back and wait for them to come home.
We drove around their area in Woodville, which seems like a very multicultural neighbourhood. We saw a lot of Asian and Indian restaurants around. We were both craving pizza so we looked at Tim’s offline maps at what was around, but every place we went to on those maps was either closed or didn’t exist. While driving around we spotted a Domino’s. We went there and ordered two pizzas. The pizzas were very cheap, they have $5 pizzas any time before 9pm for pick up. We asked how big they were and they said they were all larges (Australian larges are like Canadian small pizzas). We sat in and ate some of the pizza before leaving. When we first got to Domino’s they were really busy with delivery and their phone was constantly ringing. But while we were eating, so many people came in to order and the demographics reminded me of home. It was like we were in East Van – there were a lot of East Indians and Asians.
We headed back to Jess and Robin’s townhouse and parked in their driveway waiting for them. Since we had unreliable internet, Tim’s message saying that we’d wait at their place around 5pm didn’t go through so we were hoping that they were still coming back before their dinner. It felt like we were on a stake out since we were waiting in the car with a pizza.
Finally, we saw them pull up! They were wondering why we were waiting outside. Jess had sent Tim a message about hiding their key for us. But we told them that we didn’t get it, so we just waited. Their townhouse is nice and spacious and all the pictures around are nice and homey. It was so nice to see them and to be able to spend time with them in Adelaide.
They headed out for their conference dinner and Tim and I washed up and watched Aussie TV (and I blogged). We’re having fun watching AFL games (Tim is constantly giggling about how silly he thinks the rules are) and Masterchef Australia. Jess and Robin don’t have Wifi here but they got us a sim card that needs to be activated, so hopefully we can get that sorted out tomorrow.
We’re dropping our car off tomorrow morning at the Hertz downtown and will spend the day with Jess (Robin has to work tomorrow).
Steps today: 2,000