Adelaide Daily Diary (3)

Saturday 23rd March (cont'd)

In the end, Chris ran out of time on Saturday morning so we were left to our own devices - which was just fine. We took the opportunity to relax and have a dip in the pool:

Kelly dropped Chris off at ours just before 3 pm and he and I caught the bus in to the city and the footy match at the Oval between Adelaide Crows and Hawthorn, who are, I am reliably informed, perennial champions of the AFL. Kelly, Jo and the boys drove up to Port Adelaide and the Maritime Museum.

The Oval is a fantastic stadium - it was always a little gem of a cricket ground - almost like an English village ground, surrounded by greenery and the cathedral. It was a pretty controversial decision to upgrade it a few years ago and turn it in to a multi-purpose sports venue, but they have done it really well. Three quarters of the ground is modern stadium but the traditional open end of the ground has been left pretty much as it was:

Note the bodies up on the roof - they now do stadium roof walking tours - like the Sydney Harbour Bridge ones.

I really enjoyed the Aussie football - all action and plenty of scores on a huge pitch. Pity the home team got stuffed - probably because their colours are very like Partick Thistle's:

Chris and I got back to our place in time for Kelly to take them all home.

Sunday 24th March

Kelly had bought us another boozy Sunday morning - this time it was gin blending and it was great fun again. Drinking raw spirits at 10 am in the morning is a bit daunting, but, dear reader, we struggled through it. This was the sight we were greeted with at the start:

These were all the ingredients/botanicals/base spirits we had to blend to make our own gin. It looks like it was a bit of a puzzler for Jo:

We got 4 attempts to tweak our blends to come up with our perfect gin - this was my formulae:

(Our host took a few photos and has posted them on Facebook)

Meeting up with Kelly after the event, we headed over to Old Noarlunga again so that she and Chris could have another look at the house they viewed a week ago. We picnic'd in the park first of all and Miller climbed up a tree with his Dad:

Back at O'Halloran Hill, we had a blind tasting of our 3 gins. Naturally, I won. Chris cooked chicken for tea and the boys had fun dressing up in various costumes: