Adelaide, Australia

I spent Monday walking into the city, which was a couple more miles than I could cover in half an hour but never mind, and wandering around. My host, Yvonne, had recommended the Botanic garden; I spent an hour and a half moving through plants of all sorts and probably didn’t cover even half of it. Glorious on a sunny day, I liked the economic garden, filled with plants that are used in medicine (or in place of medicine if they don’t work, I suppose – as Ben Goldacre has it, there is no ‘alternative medicine’, there are things that work, which are ‘medicine’, and things which don’t, which are bobbins). The plaque “Does it really work?” happily and neutrally suggested the efficacy of the placebo effect that many of these plants provide.

The city is ringed by parkland, so walking from the North East of the city took me to the garden, and then into the NE of the main part of the city, which holds some of the older buildings, the shopping area (Rundle mall) and also the Palace cinema. Which does a cheap $8.50 entrance on Mondays. I had looked up the price, but didn’t realise it was a Monday special till later, so was lucky. I saw Enough Said, which was lovely, and I can’t sum it up better than Rotten Tomatoes does:

“Wryly charming, impeccably acted, and ultimately quite bittersweet, Enough Said is a grown-up movie in the best possible way.”

Actually, I’d take out that ‘quite’ for the flow. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and James Gandolfini – I didn’t realise until comparing notes with Rad that this was of course his last film before he died. Oops.

On Tuesday I went to the South Australian Museum. It has worked hard to be a museum of many things, with a small Egyptian room, aquatic exhibits and so on, but is always going to be best at and most famous for its Aboriginal exhibits, which take up two large galleries. Easy to use up hours and hours in here; it’s located off North Terrace, which also holds the SA Art Gallery and Migration museum. As I found later in the week, all are great, and I’d recommend not trying to cram them into one day. Take a little longer to explore, miss one if you have to, rather than cover them all quickly.

In the evening I joined the South Australian Road Runners for a speed session. I was hoping to be pulled along by a quicker group, but ended up edging past all bar one on the first rep, with him then letting me go for the second half of the session. As a result, I ran at the same pace even as the reps got shorter. Slightly quicker for each would have been good, but it was a decent workout at least. Possibly the Adelaide Harriers would have been quicker – they seem to dominate the front of the local parkrun (Torrens) standings. I think I’ve now run with 4 clubs on my travels, 5 if I include Ware Joggers. Which isn’t so many, but the nationalities are varied: Northern Irish, Japanese, South Korean, Australian. Never mind a parkrun tourist, I’m a running club tourist.