Australian Trains 2025: 1 - Getting There

I have been remiss in not doing my writing on our last couple of trips. We had a very good trip to the Galapagos Islands, part of Ecuador. We brought our grandkids from across Canada and England to get them all together. We were also joined by my close friend Lifeng and her son Hongyi from Beijing, China, on a 140 yacht that we chartered. All of us enjoyed seeing the unique wildlife and swimming with the friendly seals.

Marilynn & I then made a disastrous trip to Germany to spend Christmas on a river cruise down the Rhine. After being on board for a night it was announce that the river was too high, they could not get under some bridges. As a substitute the offered a bus trip following the river. We declined, flew to Frankfurt and enjoyed the city and the most fantastic circus we had ever seen.

Having travelled on most of the world's deluxe trains, except two in Australia, we decided to finish the list. One of the trains, the Ghan, runs between Adelaide in the south and Darwin in the north. The other, the India Pacific, travels between Perth on the west coast and Sydney on the east coast.

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Getting to Adelaide was tiring. We flew from Costa Rica to Panama to change planes for Santiago, Chile, then to Auckland, New Zealand where we had to get off the plane to wait for a long time for our next flight to Sydney, Australia. The final flight was a domestic flight from Sydney to Adelaide. We needed to wait for a plane change in all stops except Auckland.

A taxi got us to the comfortable Majestic Hotel in downtown Adelaide, the last city in Australia I had not visited. Needless to say we arrived pretty worn out. After sleeping for about 18 hours we ventured forth to explore Adelaide, a city of about 1,300,000 people, a great walking city, with a huge car free shopping area and friendly, helpful people. The city is the cleanest I've seen, not even a scrap paper laying around. We will be here for four days, which gave us a chance to sample some of the many good restaurants.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

We slept through most of our first night and day, getting up for dinner at a nearby restaurant and then back to bed. The next day we walked around a huge pedestrian only shopping area, trying out various restaurants along the way. Dinner was at an Argentine Restaurant on the end of a pier into the ocean. The taxi driver was from Afghanistan, a very interesting fellow who had a degree in engineering and had worked for the United Nations. We arranged for him to pick us up in the morning for a tour into the wine country.

It was a great trip. He knew the country very well, and took us to places we would never have thought to go. We had a very good lunch in a German town, where German flags flew and the buildings and houses were all of traditional German design. After visiting waterfalls, animal reserves and many other sights we returned to the hotel, very tired. It would be our last night here - the train people would pick us up in the morning to take us to the Ghan train.