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delaide

 

December 14, 2007 - January 4, 2008







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By design we arrived in Adelaide at the end of the working day. We wanted to take advantage 've very for sight-seeing as much as we could of our last day on the road and we wanted to arrive after the busines day so it would be easier to navigate around our downtown location. We arrived just after six, with still several hours of sunlight left and traffic surprisingly heavy. Only later in the evening did we remember the great "change the clock or be messed up" rule. Adelaide and South Australia are 30 minutes later than Victoria and New South Wales.

We packed in the alley next to the Quest Mansion, being fortunate to get one of the four spaces. Our arrangement was to get the key from the desk and we'd verified by phone that David would be there. He was, and was very friendly. When we went by elevator (that in itself a luxury for us) to the second floor and entered unit 24 we were immediately pleased: We found a spacious, well equipped, one bedroom flat. From the entry door there is a 3-meter hall, which leads to a very large room, shared in successon by the kitchen, a dinning area, and the living area. The latter is big and equipped with two love seats (that are both folding beds) and an easy chair. To the right, through a door that actually closes, is a short but wide hall, with cabinets, that gives access to the bath room and then the large bedroom. Later David told us that he has worked in other branches of Quest (it is a franchise) and that here we get twice the space for half of the price. We give up 100% modernity and such things as marble and gold fixtures; we're very happy with the exchange.

Even before going to the Quest Mansions and discovering if we had a pig-in-a-poke of a place, we looked about Adelaide for a place to park our car. Quest Mansions itself came without parking included in the rate; since it was right in the heart of downtown. There were several multi-story garages around but they cost $30/day and up! We'd been told by Lauren (our lessor) that we could park for $12/day but learned that was only if there was a space available of the limited number reserved for Quest Mansion. And, in fact, we'd hoped ("planned" is a bit strong) to find a place for $5/day as we'd seen in Melbourne. But, as luck would have it, Adelaide is so much smaller than Melbourne that within a few kilometers there are places where parking is free and unlimited. Having never found our mystical $5/day place, ever since we've been here we have parked on free Young Street. There has been one hitch: While going to get the car for the first time in three days since parking we learned that although there are no signs, parking is limited to 24 hours at a time. The rest of the bicycle trip there we worried about a ticket and some enormous fine to pay. We were very relieved to find no ticket; since then we move the car every 36 hours or so.

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You get the honor of getting our first email of the year. Sort of "first steps" or whatever the Brits call it. We now get our internet service (free) from the State Library of South Australia and it has been closed or we were doing something else for the last three days, so this is the first chance.

Adelaide has had a super-duper heat wave the last four days, always a day-time high over 40C (=102F). That didn't keep us from bicycling about some, nor from attending two days of the Adelaide International tennis tournament, where we sat in the heat (but at least in the shade) for six hours the second time (and three hours the first).

I'd say that the same person who is causing your tax problems is causing ours, except that I don't think one person has enough time for both of us. We (as reported by Dave in England) got a letter from the IRS saying our tax return was filed six months late and would we please pay the consequent fines and interest, etc. We weren't late; the IRS person forgot that foreign filers have an extra six months.

As with you we (Jan) hardly ship anything. She mostly uses Amazon to do the delivering. Some recent exceptions have been some sheep skins, sent direct from Australia. It was too expensive to include all of the sheep.

Our Hanukah, Christmas, and New Years were all ow key. We bicycled to the beach on Christmas day; it was very deserted and cold. That was the lull before the heat wave. For New Years we stayed in an watched two TV movies, even missing the live TV coverage of fireworks, etc. We made up for that in the next two days by seeing news reports from Australia, the US, Russia, and France that all showed the same scenes in London, Moscow, NYC, etc.

Veronica wrote a few days ago. Our going back to Paris is on, April 8 - July 8. Need us to find any more coin laundries or perform some other service?

Jan is still at home watching Russian TV. She'll join me soon and very likely will add her own words.




December 15, 2007