Trip to Adelaide

Finally after some planning, we managed to get us all on a weeks holiday to our hometown of Adelaide.  For Irving it was his first time there, and for some of us, we hadn't visited in 6yrs, so it became an opportunity for family and friends catch-ups as well as being a bit touristy and eating lots of good food.  I must admit that is the biggest thing that I miss Adelaide, so much good food!

So first stop, on our first day there we headed to the Central markets to top up on some groceries, and to show Arden and Irving some of our favourite places.

This place was excellent, if like me you like kombucha.  A few of us got spider kombuchas here.  Plus they had a kefir from WA that I had never seen here.....

A few of us headed to the zoo.  First stop was the pandas (there is one hiding down the back on the left of this shot).

Arden and Irving had a great time watching this echidna wander around.  Plus we saw a fenneck Fox which Arden was very pleased about.

After the zoo with Grandma, we managed a tram ride to the fringe, to catch up with friends and more family.  It was great riding the extension up North Tce, and to see the tram network growing since our last visit.

The following day saw us head off to Womadelaide for an evening full of music and dance,  It was a very full evening, with bell ringers doing performance art, cossack dancing, celtic fiddling, Carmen performed flamenco style.  All the best things of getting to Womad- very diverse cultural performances and styles.

Trying out some Cossack dancing.

We got to our favourite chocolatier!  Steven ter Horst with his amazing chocolates and cakes and now waffles!

A very poor shot of flying foxes (or fruit bats)  that apparently migrated to Adelaide not long after we left!  They make quite an impressive sight flying across the north-east corner of the city at sunset.

There was an exhibition celebrating local Kaurna (said Garna) culture called Yabarra as part of Fringe.  Probably my favourite bit was Arden's reaction to the river Torrens.  "That is a river!!!???"  After living in Perth for most of his life, the shock is quite understandable.  :D

We also made it to the art gallery, where they have currently arranged the gallery into a nice mix of multi-cultural Australia

Our apartments attempt at a pool was rather dismal....only somewhere without 6months worth of swimming weather would think it was reasonable to put the pool in the middle of the car park!?

A cute alleyway discovered on a walk on our final morning.

The beautiful Adelaide Arcade, has quite a few interesting collectible style shops.

We stopped here for coffee, in the Arcade.  I always hoped someone would do something like this to this part of the Arcade.

Stop off at the museum, examining some Kaurna artifacts.

Aboriginal Australian boundaries for the places that we've lived- Perth and Adelaide.

The Ancient Egypt Exhibit- which has scared at least two people in our family (one is me, the other, Willow).

Space travel exhibit

Crystals

Exploring Antartica

Checking out radiation.

Heading home to Perth again.

We haven't done much travelling, as a family, like this for quite a while, and it does remind me how much I love travelling and how lovely it is to go on a family adventure like this  with kids.  We're moved to Perth with this sort of idea in mind, and have stayed longer than planned, and it is interesting to know two different cities well enough to consider them as home.

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2025

I've made it a bit of a habit since this visit to Adelaide, to order icecream in cafes and by kombucha and make myself a spider.  My preferred kombucha here is Hippie, and their dragon fruit kombucha is delicious as a spider.  

Gabriel had to head home early on this trip and had his first experience of a house to himself.  Something that Arden has now just done recently too.

Week 5

We were all feeling a little worn out after the business of last week, and are looking forward to a quieter day tomorrow.

Gabriel spent a busy week in Adelaide, seeing family, attending Womadelaide and being taken out and about quite a bit: he went to a concert with his Granny, climbed Mt Lofty, caught his cousins in a basketball match, visited our favourite chocolate shop- Steven ter Horst, amongst a few other things.  Thursday morning he was up super early Perth time, to fly back here.

Anyway so far Gabriel is remaining attached to his Womadelaide wrist band.




So generally until Thursday, our homeschool week was a bit quieter, just being Irving, Arden and Willow here. Arden was finishing off his number block; we did the last painting and sewed his number book together.

My painting for the number nine; nine golden apples from the Golden Bird.


Arden's number nine painting and sewing up his number book.





Willow had some extra free time, to catch up on some bits last week: physics, craft and maths mostly.  She's busy finishing her doll's dress.  Here's Nya (Irving was enjoying her!)



This week Arden and I are working together on cursive.  Last time we read "the Secret Garden" I noticed a discussion revolving around whether or not Mary could print, she could certainly write, but wasn't sure about print.  Anyway I looked into it a bit, and it seemed it used to be usual to learn cursive first; so this time I decided to do the two together.  Arden has been enjoying it so far.  Here's today's work.

My examples for Arden to copy from, followed by print, to help him see the word in both forms.

Arden's cursive, and some print.


Gabriel's back to finishing his perspective block this week.  Here's this morning's breathing exercise, and his floor plan drawing.




We also had a pleasant time, off seeing WASO performing Tchaikovsky, over the weekend.  It was the first time I'd been to the Perth Concert Hall, which reminded me of the Concert Hall in Glasgow.  Generally everyone enjoyed it, but it was a bit chaotic- at one point Arden was wriggling all over the place because he was too hot!  Though fortunately that was easily solved by taking off his jacket.  :)