John's Birthday!

We started the long weekend with a bang! We went out for drinks with everyone from the office after work to celebrate another secondee leaving to go back to the UK. Afterwards, John and Ellyn went home to change and go out to Gouger Street, aka Chinatown, for some yummy Chinese. We walked out the apartment door and as the door was closing, Ellyn turned to John and said, “You’ve got your keys, right?” She frequently asks this question so when John made an awful face, she thought he was kidding. Nope! Both of our keys were sitting on the dining room table on the OTHER side of the door. That key also go us into our building so we could leave the building, but would not be able to get back in. After a few minutes of freaking out, we walked downstairs and Ellyn stayed in the foyer while John went around the street to find the building “administrator”. Of course he wasn’t home. So John came back and started talking to some guys that were standing outside (one was originally from Mississippi!). They gave us the number of their landlord (which was not the number for our landlord). It should be noted that we did not have the number to the corporate housing company KPMG rents our apartment from. It was on a piece of paper INSIDE the apartment…

We decided to head to the office and hope someone was there so that we could look up the number for the housing company. After a few messages left, we decided there was nothing more we could do and headed to Rundle Street (right next to our apartment) for some Asian there (so we’d be close if they called us back). On the way there, we received a call that someone would drive back into the city to see if the company had an extra key. We went to dinner and waited for the next call. Apparently, because they are trying to sell our apartment, the company did not have an extra key to our apartment, the realty company did. So they put us up in another apartment for the night and we had to go meet the realtor the next morning to get a spare key. The benefit of all this? We got to see the other apartment that we had to choose from before we came over. The other one was newer and so everything was fresh and clean but it was very modern and smaller and right on a busy street with street lights shining in. It also had a nice gym and pool in the building! Overall though, we agreed our apartment was better and we made a great decision!

Needless to say, since we had to meet the realtor at 8am on Saturday morning, we were up and moving early! So we decided to make the most of it! We got the City Bikes and rode all through the parklands. We found 3 BMX bike tracks of varying degrees of difficulties. John tried the intermediate while Ellyn stuck with the beginner course! By the end though, John tried out a (small) portion of the experienced track. We quickly realized we were not on the appropriate bikes though as he was coming down one of the slopes and the handlebars shifted on him!

We headed over to Haigh’s Chocolate Headquarters for a tour of the factory and some history on the Company. It was quite a neat tour and we got to see the ins and outs of how the chocolate is made (not to mention get some free samples!). Then we headed to the Central Market to get some picnic items before heading to The Pavillion, a beautiful park we’d not seen before until that morning. We had a great picnic among the flowers and the ducks, sitting next to a little creek. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjZOFP9Vq78

After we lazed around the park a bit, we headed back into the heart of town as Ellyn wanted to do a bit of shopping. While she was browsing in one of the stores, John headed to get some beer as we were on our way home to watch the Grand Final Rematch on our huge tv! If you can imagine this (we figured you probably couldn’t so we took a video…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vP30YIu-Ok), we were riding through downtown Adelaide with a case of beer propped up on the basket of John’s bike back to our apartment. We decided we looked like one of those couples that people see and say, “What on earth are they doing?!”

After the footy game, we were pretty down as our team lost so we just took the bikes back and then went for a walk through Rymil Park, next to our apartment and enjoyed a cigar John had purchased. We had a low key evening that night as we wanted to save up our energy for the next day…we were celebrating John’s birthday with lawn bowls!

Sunday morning, we got up and did a few things around the house (Ellyn baked John’s birthday cake, though not as exciting when he is there watching!), went for a run and then had a picnic and stroll through the Botanical Gardens.

We headed over to the Adelaide Bowls Club early afternoon to meet everyone for an intense match of lawn bowling! With Birthday Hats, of course!

There were 12 of us…John sure became popular quickly in Adelaide!

Keith even brought John a birthday present, which he immediately went into the bowling club and changed into:

(See previous post about the screen-printed t-shirts he wanted while we were in Sydney!)

We divided up into 3 teams and had lots of fun for playing for 2 hours. John ended up winning but it is still to be decided if that was because it was his birthday party and everyone felt bad for him…

After bowls, we headed over to Keith and Sally’s place for a BBQ! The guys stayed out back and grilled the food while the girls sat inside munching on appetizers and playing trivia games. We all hung around for a bit after dinner and the guys went across the street to play some soccer and Frisbee (apparently at the same time!) while the girls watched a “girly” Australian show. We headed home full and happy after a great day of celebrating! (We had the cake at Keith and Sally’s and everyone sang happy birthday but Ellyn forgot to get someone to take pictures!)

Monday was a holiday (Australian Labour Day) and all about John – it was his birthday after all! So we got up and he opened his presents and we had breakfast before catching a bus to Penfold’s Magill Estate winery. It is the original Penfolds winery and is located right outside of the Adelaide CBD. It’s a gorgeous spot, full of history (and wine!). We took a tour of the grounds and the cellars and saw some old wine (50’s) and some REALLY expensive wine (the barrels we saw were worth millions of dollars. We then of course, did a nice wine tasting – we had the standard and then you could pay to have an “upgraded” tasting, where you got to taste glasses from a $180 and $200+ bottles of wine…VERY nice!

After all this, we were getting hungry and decided to head to The Parade in Norwood (a tree-lined avenue with cute shops and cafes) for lunch! We walked to the bus stop but saw it was going to be 25 minutes before the next bus. So we started walking…we got about 2/3^rds of the way there and decided to stop and wait for the bus as it was only a few more minutes at this point. We rode the bus for a few blocks until we saw some cafes that we thought looked good. We walked around a bit before deciding on yiros and chips (one of John’s favorites!) and enjoyed the nice weather outside on the street. After lunch, we went to the closest bus stop. The sign said the next bus to the City would be…30 minutes!! (This is the frustrating part about public transportation…the wait!) So we decided to start walking to the City and hope that the bus would catch up with us. It never did…so basically, we walked about 7 kilometers and Ellyn was wearing like flats – not the greatest walking shoes! But the weather was nice and it was great to “explore” more of Adelaide!

As it was John’s day, he wanted to get the bikes again. So, after changing shoes, we got the bikes and rode down to the Torrens River. We rode along the path there for a bit before finding a sunny spot to lie down and take a little snooze! After a while, we decided to head home and have a proper nap!

We got up and got all dressed up to go to John’s birthday dinner at The Stag, a steakhouse right near our apartment. The food and atmosphere were wonderful!! This week should be good as it is a short week and then our last weekend in Adelaide!