In my previous Australia travels, I’d spent a grand total of about 15 hours in Adelaide, and that included sleeping. This time I had a week and a half here, with a few days before and after the cricket to see the city and around.

Back to a hostel for the first 3 nights where most of my roommates were here for the cricket, and one of whom works for the same company I do and is also on a sabbatical…very small world

I’d booked a Barossa Valley wine tour on my first full day here and found that it was also full of Brits here for the cricket. A lovely group of people and we were drinking our first glass of wine at 9.40am!! A good way to start a Sunday

In the remaining days before the cricket started, I mostly spent my time wandering around the museums, which are all handily on North Terrace (and free), as well as the Botanical Gardens

The cricket started just in time to coincide with a heatwave. I’d arrived on a Saturday and it was a very pleasant (to this Brit) temperature, in the low 20s. The cricket started on Wednesday, when the temperature was in the mid 30s. On Thursday it got to 40C. Thankfully it was a dry heat rather than a humid heat, but being sat in it, albeit in shade, for 7 hours certainly wilted me. By the time the game ended on Sunday, it had been raining and was only in the high teens. Such a crazy change in temperature in a very short space of time!

England were quite a lot better in this match – it got to day 5 and there was a tiny part of me that thought we were going to chase down the runs at one point in the morning session on the last day. But it wasn’t to be. I’ve now been to 5 test matches in Australia across 2 trips and have yet to see us win. But I’ve had a lot of fun watching the matches. There’s almost a mindfulness quality about watching live cricket. All I have to do for 6 hours is watch what’s going on on the field. I’m not staring at a screen. I’m not constantly looking at my phone. The ebb and flow of test cricket can’t be beaten in my opinion and despite the result I’ve had a great time.

I had a couple of days after the cricket in Adelaide before flying back to Perth on Christmas Day before onwards to Thailand. One of those days was an admin day involving finding a laundrette to do a big load of washing, as well as firming up and booking a couple of parts of my SE Asia itinerary.

On Christmas Eve I went out to Glenelg. Ordinarily you’d get the tram from the centre of Adelaide, but due to engineering works, it was a replacement bus which took about 25 minutes. Sadly the weather in Glenelg was cold and windy, so it wasn’t looking its best. When I returned to the city mid afternoon, I found it in blazing sunshine!!

I really enjoyed my time in Adelaide. It seems to get a bad rep on occasion for perhaps being a bit boring. Certainly I thought it less intense than some of the other big cities here. But there’s plenty to do, it’s really easy to get around, and I squeezed in my third (and fastest) Aussie parkrun.

That’s it for my Australia travels on this trip. I’ve been here for 7 weeks, and covered a lot of places I hadn’t been to before. I think Perth and WA was my favourite part, the scenery and coastline there was just stunning. But I’ve loved it all. The people are friendly, the lifestyle seems great, everywhere is very clean and tidy, public transport is cheap, there are lots of amenities in all the cities and overall just a great place to visit. I’m sure I’ll be back again at some point!