Adelaide the Festival City

The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of the Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life.  ~Robert MacIver

There is no dearth of activities for one to enjoy in Adelaide, the Festival City at the moment.  We just enjoyed a long weekend and had it not been for our darling Ess being unwell on Friday (and then up and down over the weekend) perhaps we might have partaken in many more things.

There were drives in the Adelaide Hills to be enjoyed with stops at "full to the brim and overflowing" antique shops in Woodside.  They beckoned but the hour was late!  We had already stopped at Hahndorf for Pot Belly Pies ("the best in the country") and Strathalbyn to see our health practitioner.

We enjoyed the Fringe Family Weekend with lots of live music, dancing and wonderful performance on the stage under the lovely old trees.  There were drums to bang (see Eee and I above) and flowersticks to twirl (see below).  Ess enjoyed her workshop with Cirkidz.  Kindermusik was workshopping there as well and we said G'day to our lovely educator, Mr Geoff.  We found an amazing dragonfly made in Vietnam which can balance anywhere it seems.  Sadly we missed The Amazing Drumming Monkeys which were loved by all last time.  This is just a great festival.  I love going to see all the creativity there is lurking in the depths of this city and indeed around the world and also to remind myself that I am not the only unconventional person around.  Not the only one who enjoys innovative creativity from a smaller pocket of interesting and unique people.  It actually began as an alternative to the Adelaide Festival.

We chose the Fringe Festival over Womad this year.  Tickets to Womadelaide are very expensive although the line-up of performers there is huge.  It would have been outstanding as it was a couple of years ago when I visited pregnant with my second!  I was puzzled as to why both Womad and Fringe Family Weekend coincided but it didn't seem to matter as the Fringe Family Weekend was extremely busy as was the constant flow of walkers to Womad.  Yet this is Adelaide and we were still able to drive into town and park to get to our festivity.  We walked perhaps 10-15 minutes to get to our car parked (for free) in a sidestreet.  Just one of the reasons I love Adelaide and have no longing to be in Sydney.  Great entertainment abounds at very little cost.

Soon we will have the Clipsal 500 although you won't see us there.  Fortunately for me we have no car lovers in this house.  Yet it brings a big buzz to the city and everyone knows that it's here.  The track is in the centre of the city, for heaven's sake, I am still amazed at the transformation of city streets at the end of March.

There is absolutely no reason to be want of anything to do in Adelaide in March.