Adelaide: Deadwood is a good show

Down south we flew, into greener lands and cooler temperatures. We landed in Adelaide in the early afternoon and grabbed a bus into downtown.

Adelaide’s a planned city just like Austin, and the CBD is laid out in a perfect grid shape. It’s got plenty of old buildings, densely packed, with cool touches like a light rail under construction. The residential areas that we saw were packed with neat houses like in Hyde Park back home. The botanical gardens were awesome. Before too long, we were sorry we hadn’t planned more time for this city.

On the other hand, it was also the dirtiest place we’ve been; graffiti in many places, trash on the streets, homeless folks wandering around, and some kind of smell. The rest of Australia is frickin Disney Land. So, this was a weird contrast.

We checked into Quest on King William, serviced apartments pretty well-situated in the middle of town. They were our best accommodations since Sydney for sure.

A block up from the hotel, four blocks of the street had been permanently shut down and converted to a high-rent super-trendy pedestrian shopping area called Rundle Mall. Part of the afternoon was spent wandering through and checking out shop windows and odd street art:

We also stopped at Woolworth’s (yes, they still have Woolworth’s) and grabbed groceries for the next couple of days.

With no other plans for the day, we grabbed some brochures and picked out “the best Indian restaurant in Southern Australia” (yeah, I know) for dinner. A $10 cab ride got us to Beyond India in North Adelaide. Man, this place was good. We’d say it’s on par with Clay Pit, for you Austinites.

I’d like to report that we spent the evening exploring this interesting new city after our delicious Indian food. But, the excellently paired wine that we enjoyed kinda sorta precluded this. So it was a rather early night for Kevin and Mary Beth.

The next morning, a truly unprecedented thing happened in the history of our relationship:

Mary Beth woke Kevin up.

Weird, I know. Especially weird since we had nothing whatsoever on the agenda; this was the one day on our trip to do absolutely nothing. And do nothing we absolutely did.

For breakfast, we walked back to hyper-trendy Rundle Mall and ate in an enclosed outdoor café. Shopped a bit for gifts and postcards up and down the street, then went back to the hotel and continued our marathon viewing of the first season of “Deadwood.” (If I haven’t said so yet: thank you sincerely, Erica, for recommending it.) An alarming thing happened halfway through the afternoon - we finished season one. Egads! This show is great! How to obtain season two?

…Say, wasn’t there a DVD shop back on Rundle Mall?

We ran back to Rundle Mall and grabbed season two. Only AUS$65, a lot cheaper than in the US. The amusing catch is that these were Region 4 DVDs, which mean we won’t be able to play them on our player back in the US; it’ll probably go right on Ebay.

The “Deadwood” marathon continued!

Dinner time came around, and we made a brilliant game-time decision: we wanted McDonald’s. A half-block away, we ordered value meals, extra Chicken McNuggets, apple pies, and a chocolate shake. Even with the “Super Size Me”-style splurge, it was still the cheapest dinner we’ve had the whole trip. We sat our fat butts on the hotel couch, watched a vulgar HBO western, and ate greasy American food. It was one of the best nights of the whole trip.

About five episodes into season two, I began to conk out and headed to sleep, followed by a reluctant Mary Beth. For all I knew, it was sleepy time for us both.