Adelaide Central Market

Went into Adelaide Central Market today to stock up on cheese for our girlie weekend. The plan was to kill two birds with one stone and drop OH off to sit his citizenship test in Currie Street en route.

Firstly, I've not been to the market on a Wednesday before - we tend to go on either Friday night or Saturday: Friday night is good for atmosphere, they have live music playing usually in the buskers spot, lots of families out and about, lots of "tasting" samples (you can almost get a whole meal if you time it right on your way round!) and a real buzz to the place; Saturday is good because the market closes at about 3pm so around lunchtime, lots of the stalls start to reduce their stock and you can get some real bargains. Anyway, Wednesday during the day, some of the market stalls aren't open, but I guess about 60% of them were, including my favourite cheese one, the car park was half empty (so I didn't have to do that "stalking" thing and follow someone back to their car for their space!) and even better, I found that by spending more than $10 at my favourite meat stall, I got a voucher for two hours free parking! I shall be going on a Wednesday again!!

Met up with OH (unable to take his citizenship test after all as the computers went down!) and we had a great lunch at Ace Bar, in the middle of the market. Voucher from the Entertainment Book meant we got two rump steaks with chips and salad for the total price of $15! Really nice steak too. Washed it down with a couple of nice glasses of the house wine specials, beats working any day!

Unfortunately for the rest of the afternoon, things went a little downhill. Needed to lodge the kids' aussie passport renewal applications at the Post Office. Having got all the paperwork together, filled out the forms online, printed them out, got the photos taken in a local chemist so they are exactly the right size, got them signed by a neighbour, realised we needed our parental signatures signed too so grabbed another neighbour doing his gardening to do that, I trundled off to the Hope Valley Post Office, only to be told I needed a "Corporate" Post Office such as the one at St Agnes or Tea Tree Plaza. Drove to St Agnes, queued for about ten minutes, got to the counter, only to be told by very unhelpful man that I should have made an appointment and I was too late to make one today! Apparently it takes them ten minutes to "check you've filled the form in properly" (D'oh, I have filled out forms before - and could read through and confirm I'd answered all the questions in about two minutes!) so that's another job that has to go back in the "To Do" list!

At least OH and I won't need any dinner tonight - kids are sorted with some $1 prime beef burgers from my favourite meat stall (think it's called "Feast") - the burgers are so thick and chunky that you can cut one in half through the middle to make two 'normal' sized ones! So much for Coles advert about feeding the famiy for under $10 - I could do four of us for less than $5 with these - and that would include the buns, and some salad too!