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Friday, November 28, 2008

Adelaide Day 4 - Haigh's, Central Markets, Mt Lofty

So following on from our thrid day in Adelaide, it was our final day.

We started off the day with a visit to the Haigh's Visitor Centre. We had already visited the shop on Rundle Mall on day 2. This time, we had booked in for a tour of the Haigh's factory. The tour was extremely interesting, hearing about the Haigh's family owned business and seeing how things worked. Most of the processes in Haigh's chocolate is still hand made and the guide kept repeating that they make their own chocolates from the cocoa bean stage. There was also lots of free samples to keep us happy.


Next it was on to Central Markets. The market had lots of produce that I wanted to gobble up. I tucked into a few things, one of which was a Portuguese tart from Dough...


The Portuguese tart cost a whopping $3 each. But I had to try it out just to see how good it was. It turned out I should have saved my $3 to buy lottery instead. The tart was foul. The pastry was so soggy and tasted partially uncooked. It was more a shortcrust (if you can call it that) pastry rather than a puff pastry. The custard part was also very bad. It was all wobbly and had a really bad taste. It was more the consistency of a lemon tart rather than a custard tart. I make better Portuguese tarts myself and $3 would have made about 6.


After the markets, we grabbed a quick lunch at one of the food court shops and then headed off to Mount Lofty. The mountain gave a great view of Adelaide. The day was quite cloudy so it was hard to make out everything but we could definitely see Adelaide.


Finally, as we left Adelaide and waved goodbye, we stopped by one last winery. We stopped at Petaluma and Bridgewater Mill. The water wheel was so ancient looking. The restaurant inside was also really weird, with seating around an arena style on multi levels. The wines were ok but nothing really caught our fancy so we bid them farewell and headed off home.


After a tiring, intoxicated, relaxing, scenic, intoxicated, educating, indulgent, intoxicated four days at Adelaide, we managed to each buy back a stack of good wine. I thought Adelaide would be a big bore but I actually liked it. It's not as fast paced as Melbourne and Sydney, but not dead quiet like Tasmania. It's sort of like Queensland but with style. I loved all the buildings, especially the churches. And would you believe it, despite seeing so many churches, I never had an opportunities to get a good photo of a few even. The slow traffic speed of 60 on the large main roads also set this mood of everything being relaxed. But there was still enough people around to not feel like an isolated place. I would go back to Adelaide again to visit more wine regions and visit the city again.

2 comments:

  1. I think that sums up my opinion of Adelaide. Admittedly I've only been there a couple of times, each time for work, but what I've seen I've liked.

    My mum and I are planning a camping trip over christmas, and it seems we're going to be heading awfully close to Adelaide. We'll see where we end up!

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  2. Maffy, I had never been to Adelaide before this trip so I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it.

    You should take a short trip to the wineries, that was really fun.

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