The original iteration of my itinerary had me in Brisbane today, and I did not have much planned in Adelaide. My legs were still sore from Tongariro, and the top tourist attraction in Adelaide, the Adelaide Central Market, was closed because it was a Monday. So my plan was to just take it easy, catch up on blogging, go to the store to buy a new power bank, and go to the South Australia Museum. All of this could be accomplished easily.

My hostel, Adelaide Central YHA, had free pancakes on offer every morning from 7:30-9am. They left out pancake batter and you had to cook them yourself. I made the mistake of using a stainless steel pan and not letting it get hot enough, so my first attempt at a pancake got completely stuck to the pan, but a woman who was just finishing up let me use her cast iron pan, which was much better. The pancakes were a bit thinner, more airy, and bouncier than I was used to. What I decided to do was spread a bit of raspberry jam on them and roll them up, which was pretty good.

I then set out to walk about ten minutes north east to Rundle Mall, which is an outdoor shopping street in central Adelaide. On the way I stopped to get coffee from Likuid Espresso. I got a latte and asked for sugar in it, and the woman asked if I wanted "1 sugar or half sugar." I got 1 sugar and it still tasted like no sugar, I think this is probably because Australian people really don't like sweet coffee.

Rundle Mall was a very nice area to do some shopping. There was a lot of street art and decorations because of the Lantern Festival which was the day before.

I went to JB Hi-Fi, which is an Australian electronics store, to buy a new power bank, because I was having trouble with the USB-C port on my old power bank. I identified one that I wanted to purchase, and the salesperson came over to help me and said that he had promised himself he would help someone buy a power bank today. He was really excited about their extended warranty plan which extended the warranty from 2-years to 3-years, which I didn't really want. The extended warranty caused A$26. He was so excited about it, that he offered to reduce the price of the powerbank by A$27 if I agreed to get it, so I accepted his offer. But the system would not let me get the extended warranty because I didn't have an Australian phone number. He still let me buy the powerbank for the newly discounted price, and I was very grateful to save some money.

Adelaide is the capital of the state of South Australia, and it is a planned city. The city is surrounded on all sides by grassy areas referred to as the North, South, East, and West Terraces. I walked a couple more blocks to the North Terrace, home of the University of Adelaide and a few museums. I went into the Art Gallery of South Australia first, and took a quick look through the Australian Art gallery. A lot of this was more modern art made by Australians to reflect Australian nature, and both Aboriginal and European cultures.

Afterwards I went just down the street to the South Australia Museum, which had a very nice exhibit on the history of Aboriginal Australians, with some very cool displays of some old tools, baskets, and boomerangs. Aboriginal Australian Culture dates back more than 60,000 years, and so they are said to be the oldest civilization in the world. The museum also had some nice exhibits on indigenous animals, and artifacts from other Pacific Island cultures.

At this point it was pretty late in the afternoon and I was hungry. I went back to the vicinity of Rundle Mall to Afghan Charcoal Kabob House, which was very highly rated on Google Maps. I had a double chicken wrap, which was prepared fresh to order. It was very good, especially the bread, although I think the chicken was marinated better at the Afghan restaurant in Christchurch.

I went back to the hostel for a few hours to relax and catch up on blogging before heading back outside. In the evening I wanted to check out the Himeji garden, located at the far east end of the south terrace. I took an e-scooter to get there. There was not a lot of traffic and it was fun to be on the roads.

Adelaide is a sister city with Himeji, Japan, home of the famous Himeji castle (the family went there in December 2019). So the Himeji Garden is built to honor the relationship between Adelaide and Himeji. The garden was nice and peaceful, but pretty small. It is just one part of a series of gardens located throughout the terraces of Adelaide.

I made my way back in the direction of the hostel via escooter. I stopped along the way at chinatown, which is right outside of the Central Market, and two blocks away from the hostel. I wasn't hungry enough for a full meal, so I went to Daebak Bros to get a Korean corn dog: mine was cheese-wrapped sausage, with fried potatoes on the outside, topped with ketchup and sugar, and it was very good. I also went down the block to Hitea. I wanted to get a mango and coconut drink, but they were sold out, so I got a mango yogurt drink instead. It is pretty funny to me that I ended up getting these two items, because when I went to Seattle in September to help Christine move, the two of us and Dylan went to Chinatown there and also ate Korean corn dogs and mango yogurt, so I was basically recreating Seattle in Adelaide.

While walking back I saw that there was a DIY hotpot restaurant that was open until 11:30pm, and hot pot was fresh on my mind because earlier that day I received some snapchats from Christine that she had gone with Dylan and Jacob to get hotpot to celebrate the Lantern Festival, so I knew I wanted to head back there later when I was hungry again. Around 10pm I went back to 18th Street Hot Pot. The way it works is you grab a bowl and tongs and fill it up with whatever you want, and then you pay by weight (A$3.9/100g, and there is a 400g minimum). Then they ask you what spice level you want, and they cook it all for you and bring you out a bowl that is all ready to eat. At most other individual hot pot places I've seen in China and Hong Kong you sit at a table which has a mini hot pot built into the table and you sit there for a while and cook it yourself, but I think this system is certainly a lot easier. Also, you can get a pretty good deal paying by weight if you just get mostly meat or other "fancier" items. My hot pot had some beef and lamb slices, bok choy, prawn dumplings, a couple of cheese fish balls, enokitake, and a nice piece of duck blood on top. I ordered it at the medium spice level which they called "spicy", but I could have handled spicier.