Saturday and Sunday, July 15 & 16, 2017
Our afternoon flight to Adelaide was quick, easy, and on time. We picked up our rental car and made our way to our hotel to get ready for dinner plans with Sami and Niamh Termanini. Sami is the son of my parents dear friends, Lina and Rocky. Sami and Niamh met in Ireland, where Niamh is from and Sami went to medical school, and then they moved to Adelaide seven years ago. Sami is an ER doctor and Niamh is a nurse, and they are expecting their first child! We met them in our hotel lobby and walked down the street to an Italian restaurant called Amalfi. It was noisy and jam packed, as it was Saturday night, but luckily Niamh had reserved a table and we were seated right away. We had a wonderful dinner and it was so fun catching up on each other's lives and hearing Sami's crazy and gruesome stories from the ER, including a particularly nasty shark bite incident! We lingered for quite some time over dessert and coffee until it was time to part ways. Unfortunately we wouldn't be able to see them again while we were there, as they had to work, but we promised to connect the next time they came to visit Sami's parents in California. I'm kicking myself once again for forgetting to take a group photo of us all!
The next morning we ate in our hotel's restaurant and were sorely disappointed, especially since breakfast wasn't included as it had been in our other hotels. Oh well. One good thing our hotel did have was guest laundry facilities. Woohoo! Always so exciting to wash clothes when we travel. That was my important mission of the morning, and I had started a load before breakfast hoping to be efficient with our time, although I have yet to find a washer and dryer in our travels that are as effective as the ones we have at home. It took nearly two hours to dry our load and it delayed our sightseeing while we waited for it to finish, but we weren't too bothered. It was a dreary, rainy day anyway, and we didn't mind having some downtime in our room. Ewan and I even made a brief excursion to the neighborhood Target, as we were located just around the corner from the central shopping district. We picked up some takeaway Asian street food for lunch and ate in our room until finally our laundry was ready and we could head out to the Aviation museum, which seemed like a fine rainy day activity.
The museum hosts a decent collection of aircraft, both civilian and military, with the highlight being an F-111. Obviously this activity appealed more to my boys than me, but I love watching Gavin revert back to his aeronautical engineering background and turn into Aero-Geek Dad, offering in depth explanations of everything to Ewan: "Notice that landing gear with the wheel high up on the tail... did you know that's called a tail dragger? Look at that engine... do you see how the pistons radiate out?? That's called a radial engine. See how this engine narrows here? The air goes in here and is compressed then it goes into the combustion chamber which gives it the thrust. Look at the rubber on the front edge of the wings. That looks like a bladder they could inflate as a de-icing strategy," and on and on and on. I stood around while they geeked out, climbing in and out of the historical fuselages and cockpits, big smiles on their faces.
My patience was to be rewarded at our next destination: the Magill Estate tasting room for Penfolds winery, which was only ten minutes from our hotel. It was late afternoon, rainy, cold, and already dark.
Now this was my kind of rainy day activity! The elegant and highly modern tasting room was warm and welcoming. Ewan plunked himself down in a comfy leather chair and was happy to plug himself into his device, headphones in his ears, as Gavin and I approached the bar where we shared a tasting. The list was quite extensive featuring ten wines, both whites and reds, though our knowledgeable hostess was kind enough to pour a couple of extras that weren't on the menu.
The final item on the menu was the "Father" tawny port, which had us nodding our heads, licking our lips, and discussing how to get a bottle of it home. Noting our enthusiasm, she proclaimed, well if you liked that one then you really need to try this one," then produced another bottle and proceeded to pour a syrupy, amber colored, honey-like liquid into our glasses. "This is the Grandfather Tawny,"she proclaimed. We each took a sip of the liquid butterscotchy deliciousness and went "Mmmmmmmmmmm!!" Of course Grandfather was 2.5x the price of the Father, but with the exchange rate in our favor we decided to splurge, especially since they had a special discount for buying 2 bottles. Yup. We bought two. It was so good.
We went back to our hotel, borrowed umbrellas, and walked two short blocks to a very lovely Argentinian Steakhouse called Sosta where we had a delicious dinner before retiring for the night. So far, so good, Adelaide!
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