Tegan and I have been in Adelaide for the last few days: Tuesday to Friday for a work conference, then Friday night to Sunday just to hang out, relax and do some sight-seeing. And the verdict: we really like it.

For the conference, we were staying in the Hilton where we had a decent but fairly plain room (I probably wouldn’t choose to stay there again). Since Friday nights we were in the Pacific International Suites on Hindmarsh square, which were quite nice. Everything was a bit smaller than at the Hilton, but they had been more recently renovated and were quite nice. We spent yesterday exploring around the CBD, which was good fun. We wandered through Rundle Mall, went to some decent book shops (always good), and spent a great few hours exploring the Central markets.

The Central Markets are, for us, one of the best things about Central Adelaide and had us wondering:
1. Why don’t we have one of these in Canberra?
2. Why don’t we live in Adelaide?

The answer to the second of those questions was: because we don’t have a good job, church or friends or family there, but Adelaide really has a number of things going for it. The city has a really good feel, and we found several good cafés and restaurants, not to mention good bookshops and essentially free wireless internet access in many places (or rather, it comes complimentary, so to speak, because we already have an unlimited account with Internode, the primary ISP involved in it). The city centre in Adelaide feels a bit like a cross between Sydney, Melbourne and a country town: it has the old sandstone buildings and feel of Sydney, the malls and the centralisation of Melbourne, and still a bit of a small-town feel, as everything is fairly close together, etc.

On the topic of the markets, there were several great things:
There was a wonderful little deli, coffee bar, pizza and pasta café called Haigh’s Chocolates, which is another great selling point.

All in all, we had a great time and you can see some of our photos here:
http://homepage.mac.com/mistertim/PhotoAlbum2.html