This morning's run is a hot one. Overnight the temperature has soared by 10 degrees and even at 8.30 am it's a scorcher. The city is buzzing because today is the Tour Down Under - the Aussie equivalent of the Tour de France and it finishes here in Adelaide. My run takes me down to the start/finish and food stalls are set up in the park with plenty of stuff for the kids.
Once I'm back and showered we head out for breakfast at the Adelaide Gallery where we can sit outside in the shade and read the papers whilst enjoying a modest breakfast. Then it's off to the Press Photography Exhibition at the State Museum. The photographs are inspirational - from sport to war, refugee crises to medical triumphs - definitely worth a look. Meanwhile, outside, the temperature is climbing into the mid-thirties.
Heading through the crowds in the park for the cycling, we cross the river to the Adelaide Oval. Five minutes on foot from the city centre - now that's the place to put a stadium. It's a really magnificent stadium and we decide - well, I do - that we'd like the tour. But because of the cycle race, a rather serious (grumpy) young man in charge says that there will be no more tours today. Now, you will know that I don't take No very kindly so whilst the man with the camera went for a wee, I headed into the other office - this one offers roof top tours. Now I don't want to put on a climbing suit and boots but I do want to go up top and take a photograph so here's how it goes...
"Hi, can you help me? I've come all the way from Yorkshire - home of cricket, home of Joe Root and Tim Bresnan. My son loves cricket and we just want to go up high enough in the stands to take a photograph. Can you take us? Please? Are you crumbling yet?" He crumbled. He took us up to the top of the stands to take some great pics. It was pointed out to me by my travelling companion that I had completely embarrassed myself but at least I didn't get as far as Geoffrey Boycott.
By the time we get outside it is properly roasting. We walk back up through the packed streets and decide that rather than boil in the heat to watch the cyclists go past in a nano-second, we would pack our bags and drive up the coast. The city sprawls unattractively for miles along the coast and whereas the centre of the city and the residential areas are charming, the miles and miles of discount stores, casinos, fancy dress shops (yes, really!) and tyre warehouses are depressing, but eventually we arrive at Wilunga - a lovely family beach of almost Portuguese proportions where we toast in the sun before joining the flocks of Adelaide weekenders eating at the Star of Greece. Delicious salt and pepper squid with chips and salad in the sun. Perfect.
Then we wibble our way back along the coast road, rather than the main road, to the city. Too full and too tired to eat out we find the hotel guest laundry and do the necessary but we do make a short outing to Scrolls, just behind the hotel. Scrolls is a Vietnamese ice cream parlour where you choose the flavour of your ice cream and they make it before your very eyes on the frozen equivalent of a griddle, pouring cream onto the frozen surface which immediately freezes (video available!). Then it gets wrapped into scrolls, hence the name, and put into a pot. Delicious!
Night all!
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