Hello from Tomorrow Down Under! (5/23/23)

We have completed our long journey to Adelaide! We are currently 14.5 hours ahead of our friends and family in the Central Time Zone of the US.

A quick review of our travel. We flew Air Canada from Chicago to Vancouver and then Vancouver to Sydney. We were not terribly impressed with the airline. On the plus side, we left and arrived on schedule and the staff were friendly. However, they provided only barebones amenities for 2 international flights, and they left the lights up for the entirety of the flight to Sydney. Surprisingly, Bob and I slept the most that we have on any international flight in along time. We then switched to Virgin Atlantic for the flight from Sydney to Adelaide. Again, pretty basic but friendly service.

In terms of the airports, the Vancouver airport is designed to create feelings of calm, with lots of water features, artwork, a big aquarium with fish, etc. We were impressed. The Sydney airport, on the other hand, lacked good signage for the customs process and due to our domestic transfer, required us to pick up our luggage and then take a 15 minute bus transfer to the domestic terminal to check our bags onto the next flight. A process that would have made me crazy stressful if we hadn’t had such a long five hour layover.

The Adelaide airport was cute and bright. We were off quickly and our luggage was on the carousel by the time we got there to pick them up. We grabbed a bus into the city (about 20 minutes at 2ish this afternoon) and then had a short walk to our hotel.

After checking in and getting settled, we walked to the Adelaide Central Market that we had read about. We loved it. It’s a good mix of restaurants and vendors of various goods — produce, cheese, wine, ready to go salads, meats, bulk goods, flowers, etc.

We always love to find examples of the varied uses of the English language around the world. See below. In the US, this site would have been marked as a bus station.