Oh Adelaide

There's no two ways about it and I'm sure most Adelaidens (Adelaiders?) are aware of this shortcoming but the city isn't very happening. It's pretty and has an unusually high measure of parkland in proportion to its size and number of inhabitants but that doesn't make up for the fact that there's not a whole lot to do. We're trying, too! We've been to the Maritime Museum out in Port Adelaide (which technically is another city so it doesn't even count as an Adelaide attraction, oops), we've walked through the city centre and today we took a tour through the Botanical Garden. I think we've covered the tourist trail in its entirety.

The botanical gardens were very pretty though and entry as well as the tour were free so big bonus points for that. On one end of the park there's a beautiful old greenhouse, originally from Dresden, which was shipped over in pieces over many years before it was finally assembled in full again at the botanical gardens. Inside it has, fittingly, a Bismarck Palm:

We were also lucky to see the lotus flowers in bloom on the pond. For most of the year it's just a brown, boring pond but when the lotus flowers bloom it looks like this:

Apart from spending great shade, the coolest thing about the lotus flower leaf is that it's water repellent. So you can use it as an umbrella for all seasons.

They also have a very neat bamboo section at the garden where all sorts of different types of bamboo grow. The most striking are the striped and the black bamboo (which unfortunately serves as a memorial wall for love-struck teenagers as well).

To round things off, here are some pictures of the dahlias, currently in full bloom and looking spectacular in all their plumpness and color: