Well, five years ago I got to know my lovely fiancé Elvira. As we all know: Hillary Clinton did not win the presidential race, the engineers have experienced all sorts of trouble with the A380 and the Space Shuttle programme is discontinued. A lot of things can change in five years. Thank god our relationship is not one of them. We still are a very happy couple and definitely had far less problems than Airbus' Suberjumbo...:)
Anyhow we decided that this anniversary should be celebrated. As an English proverb says: you must make the hay when the sun shines. Since we are not yet blessed with Internet at our flat (I might tell you about that story some other time...) we could not look up departure times for trains and buses. So we decided to walk to the train station and let the time table decide for us. The verdict was Port Adelaide.
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| Location of Port Adelaide - picture adapted from Google map |
We first visited the Fishermen's Wharf Market. It is basically a large hall, two stories filled with stalls that sell pretty much anything. From bicycles to pizza wheels, oversized lollipops to oriental spices and "Made in China" plush toys to postcards from Adelboden, Switzerland (dated 1908). If you love flea markets you will love this. Some of the shops are so stuffed with objects that the danger of being buried would be rated "very high" by the Swiss Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.
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'Deadly' market stall and Port Adelaides' waterfront
After 1.5 hours my stomach was rumbling and my optical nerve suffered from severe input overload. A big portion of small donuts and a boat cruise promised to cure this unfavourable condition - the latter with a pleasant side effect. A permanent population of roughly 30 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins live in the Port River. An estimated 300 more come to visit occasionally. So we got on the boat and Elvira could not hide her anticipation since she had never seen dolphins before - unfortunately that turned into slight disappointment 90 minutes later. No sight of them.
Having had a relaxing cruise was a consolation nevertheless and so we strolled to the bow to enjoy the last 15 minutes of the trip. And suddenly there were dolphins. First one, then two and then three. The captains announcement "Dolphins bow riding to the left of the ship" was like a spark in a gun powder factory. All passengers ran towards the front of the ship as if they had to catch the last life boat leaving the Titanic. Within split seconds no one but the lucky few in the first row could catch a glimpse of the spectacle displayed in the water. The unlucky majority tugged, pushed and shoved for the second best places. Elvira giggled like a small child and exclaimed "Ooohs" and "Aaahs" whenever a dolphin jumped out of the water - completely in her own world and unaware of the turmoil behind her.
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Dolphin bow riding and us two on the ship
Pictures (except for the map) by P. Wettstein
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