8th November 2009

Today was an early start as we had arrived in Adelaide. Our clocks had gone forward an hour yet again overnight, putting us 11 hours ahead of the UK and to add to the confusion Adelaide is a further half-an-hour ahead of that! The captain requested that we all operated on ship time which did cause a little confusion at first.

Adelaide is about a 45 minutes ride from the port and our trip included a tour of the city, which was founded in 1836 and laid out on a grid pattern with wide streets, beautiful parks and open public space. The city was planned for free colonists as opposed to other towns in Australia that were based on prison colonies. The city is named in honour of Queen Adelaide, consort to King William IV and has a population of just over one million. In the short city tour I would certainly agree that it looks a beautiful place. After the city orientation we went to Tandanya Cultural Institute where we saw some really interesting pieces of art. The art in the gallery come from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and their art still reflects the complexity and diversity of the people themselves. Most visitors instantly recognise the dot paintings of the Western Desert People but the artists in this Institute use many more mediums and art forms including acrylic paint on canvas, fabric, photographic works and multimedia. The final stop on the tour was to Penfolds Winery where we enjoyed a number of tastings (none of which we spat out!) The coach driver then agreed to let people off the bus in the city centre rather than return to the ship and so we decided to have a closer look at the city at our own pace. However, there was one major problem – it was hot, 35C to be exact and we seemed to spend a lot of time searching for shade. We did walk down one of the open malls, looking at the shops and had lunch in a cafe with air-conditioning.

We finally admitted defeat and returned to the ship for some sun-bathing. As we sailed out of port a couple of dolphins followed us a little way. Our table companions are very nice; with us there are 10 of us on the table and we all have a good laugh every evening. Last night there was a pool-side party at 10 pm. There was food galore and each buffet table was adorned with ice sculptures. A reggae band played music and 6 of us from our table sat together. We 3 men didn't dance until the very end but the 3 'girls' bopped the night away under the stars. I must admit there is something almost surreal dancing on a ship in the middle of November, but I could certainly get used to it.