There are little communities all along the ocean just outside of Adelaide and this is where we booked an Airbnb for a week.  Our apartment with full kitchen was in the backyard of a Greek family.  This turned out to be an amazing experience.  The couple was in their 60’s and have two daughters in their early 30’s living at home.  It didn’t take long for them to make us part of the family.  The parents were born and raised in Greece and the mother only cooks Greek food from scratch.  Before long the mother, Betty, was bringing us little goodies every day and later we were eating at their table with the family.

Betty spent hours teaching me how to make Dolmadas and a spinach dish called Spanakopita.  Many of the ingredients are grown in her yard, particularly the spices.  Betty and her husband formerly owned an olive tree farm and even now pick one ton of olives each May and cold press them for their own olive oil.  They go through 200 liters a year!

Here Betty is making a dough for the spinach pie.  How do you like the rolling pin?  On the left is Christina, one of her daughters who is a lawyer and recently worked in Dubai for 6 years.

I took many photos and notes on how to make the dolmadoes.  They are so much better than the ones you buy ready made.  I had a lot of practice wrapping them and think I have that aspect down pat.  It takes two leaves with one leaf half layered over the other and the filling has to be in this position before starting to roll them.

It was a good thing Betty chose this day to teach me how to make all these foods because a nephew phoned that he had just been fishing and caught a lot of calamari and was bringing them and his family over.  There were 11 of us for a big Greek meal.  One of the daughter’s boyfriends brought three big bins of dishes as replacement for the breakage they had caused to Betty’s dishes earlier when dancing to Greek music.  A very lively family! In fact, they had all just returned from Greece a few weeks prior because one of their sons got married there.  It took three months of parties before the big event occurred so they were all gone quite a while.

This is the finished Spanakopita that Betty was rolling out earlier.

On our last evening Betty and Bill took us on a drive through the beach towns and then to Glenelg, the largest and most well known of the coastal towns in the area.

Glenelg main walking area

 The Stamford Hotel and tram.  There are trams and trains in all the towns that can take you directly into the heart of Adelaide – otherwise about a 30 minute drive.

Each town that we visited had a long pier

I neglected to take pictures of the sunset where the sky first glowed yellow and then turned red.

Bill is a real softy and here Betty is giving him some change to give to a street musician

Note the photo bomber in the background.  We went for coffee after this and I am about coffee’d out.  The Greeks have these little cups of very strong coffee several times a day and we were always invited to have a cup sitting in the backyard.  Betty makes an anise cookie that is barely sweetened with honey and it is perfect to go along with the coffee.  On this day Betty offered to show me how to make Mousakka if we would stay another day.  We had already extended one extra day and it was time to move on even though the temptation to stay longer was pretty strong.

We really didn’t do a whole lot in the Adelaide area.  One day we drove to Lofty Mountain where there is a botanical garden, wildlife preserve, and lookout on top of the mountain.  The view from the top was of the city and the ocean.  On another day we drove to the Fleurieu Peninsula and liked it so well that we later went back and spent two days there.  That will be another post.

The historic Largs Pier Hotel was just two blocks from our Airbnb and directly across the street from the ocean.

A typical house along the coast. There is so much coastline that it is not unusual to see smaller houses like this with an ocean view.

Many houses have this thatch fencing around their front yards.

We walked out on so many piers that I can’t remember if this was Largs Bay or Semaphore which are two towns next to each other.  You wouldn’t believe how green the ocean is here.  This is actually the Indian Ocean.  I am so envious of the Aussies with so much coastline.