Adelaide: Day 4

There are a lot of logistics you have to tackle when you move to a new place, including setting up a bank account, getting your work ID number and badge, learning where to shop for groceries, finding the wine shop, and of course, finding your bearings in a new place.  We have the added challenge of driving on the left side!  So far, we have made excellent progress on tackling so many of these tasks, but we have also tried to make time to explore new places with the kids!  We have ventured out to get set up with Australian phone numbers which makes everything MUCH easier when you can use Google maps navigation.

We did some shopping downtown Adelaide and enjoyed some of the public art and the kids have both appreciated the availability of Asian food.  The photo above features a sculpture titled "Spheres" but is locally referred to as the Malls Balls since it is placed in a popular pedestrian mall downtown.  While we were in the Rundle mall, we found a food court loaded with options to appease our picky kids.  It may surprise you to know that Miles loves a certain sushi roll; he learned to love sushi from spending so much time with his friend Louis (and thanks to Lena's great cooking!).  Baxter is becoming more adventurous, but he didn't try or appreciate Indian food until we had Butter Chicken during quarantine; now he elected to order it for lunch!  We're grateful anytime we can get them to try new/different food options. 

When the weather didn't deliver the predicted rain this afternoon, I suggested we visit a local hiking trail in the Adelaide hills (25 minutes from our place).  It was a very scenic gully with a stream bubbling down through the eucalyptus grove.  When we were just shy of our turnaround point we spotted our first koala in the wild!  We gawked and enjoyed seeing this adorable little dude swaying in the wind in a tree very close to the trail; mad props to Jeremy for spying BOTH of the koalas on our 3.5 mile hike.  We were thrilled to get to see these amazing guys in the wild.  We also spotted Australian magpies (loads of these), a blue winged parrot, and a few others we have yet to identify.  Not bad for wildlife spotting on our first hike!