How to see the best of Adelaide in a weekend

Despite being a capital city, Adelaide somehow manages to feel like a big country town. 

It may be home to more than 1.3 million people but Adelaide is one of those cities that somehow manages to feel like a big country town. A place where you have a great range of restaurants and bars, incredible arts and culture festivals and lots of things to do without the stress of crowds and traffic snarl-ups.

Drivers in Adelaide still smile and wave each other in from side streets, and when a local told me they’d moved from Melbourne because they’d “just had enough of the city life” it made perfect sense. Whether you’re heading to Adelaide as the city enters its Mad March festival period, or any time of year, here’s how to spend 48 hours in South Australia’s friendly capital.

Day 1

Morning

Start your day with breakfast at Adelaide Central Market, where popular cafés rub shoulders with more than 70 stalls of fresh produce and artisan products. Join a guided breakfast tour to meet stallholders and sample their wares, or fuel up on coffee and a hearty breakfast at Zuma Caffe, before working your way down these food lover’s aisles.

Lunch

Take a 15-minute stroll along Victoria Square/Tarntanyangga and down King William Street to 2KW Bar and Restaurant. On the rooftop of the former Bank of New South Wales, 2KW has a large outdoor terrace with views over Government House, and an indoor restaurant where you can see the Josper oven in action. Executive chef Sam Christopher’s menu has a focus on local and native Australian ingredients and includes Spencer Gulf king prawns with saffron, Davidson plum and chilli oil, and the ridiculously moreish triple-cooked salt and vinegar potatoes.

Peel Street is home to wine bars, cocktail bars, and whisky and gin bars. Picture: Supplied.

Afternoon

Walk five minutes down North Terrace to the Art Gallery of South Australia where more than 47,000 works of art are found behind those classic Revival-style walls. At 2pm every day you can join a free gallery tour to be guided to some of the most outstanding works in the collection.

Later, watch the sun set from the top of one of the city’s best-known buildings on a twilight RoofClimb over Adelaide Oval. Learn about the city’s history as you take in the view, with an adrenaline-pumping option to lean out over the edge, 50m above the ground.

Evening

Book ahead for a table in one of Australia’s hottest restaurants. At Arkhé, Jake Kellie, the former head chef of Michelin-starred Burnt Ends in Singapore, is not cooking with gas. Or electricity. It’s fire-powered cooking all the way, and if you’re lucky enough to get one of the 19 counter seats you can watch Jake and the team putting those open flames to work.

After dinner make your way to Adelaide’s West End for some quality small-bar hopping in the laneways. Leigh Street and its sister Peel Street are home to wine bars, cocktail bars, whisky and gin bars and the speakeasy-style Maybe Mae where cocktails are elevated by house-made seasonal ingredients.

Sip coffee that’s been roasted on-site at My Kingdom for a Horse as you choose a breakfast made with ethically produced ingredients. Picture: Supplied.

Day 2

Morning

Sip coffee that’s been roasted on-site at My Kingdom for a Horse as you choose a breakfast made with ethically produced ingredients, then head to the Adelaide Botanic Gardens for an Aboriginal Native Plants and Social History Tour with Bookabee Australia.

These engaging and informative tours are a great way to learn about local Aboriginal culture as well as how plants around the garden can be used, including medicinal grasses, and the best trees for shelter and protection.

Lunch

Take a seat under a soaring ceiling in the Art Deco bank building that’s now Fishbank. This sustainable seafood restaurant has a “fin to scale” approach and uses every possible part of the fish. Be sure to share a plate of the delicious twist on prawn toast and even if you don’t need to use the bathroom, trust me, and go see it anyway.

Or you can cook your own lunch in the middle of the River Torrens in a BBQ Buoy. These doughnut-shaped self-drive boats can seat up to 10 people around a barbecue in the middle, or you can skip the food and just enjoy a drink as you float through the Riverbank precinct.

You can cook your own lunch in the middle of the River Torrens in a BBQ Buoy. Picture: Supplied.

Afternoon

Get your steps up exploring the shops in Rundle Mall where you’ll find more than 700 shops along with a 7m sculpture of Salvador Dalí’s Triumphant Elephant.

Pop into Balfours Bakery to try a Balfours frog cake, which locals have been eating for almost 100 years and has been officially recognised as a Heritage Icon by the National Trust of South Australia. Keep on shopping your way down to Rundle Street East where you can hunt for new designer fashions and thrift store bargains.

Evening

Slide from shopping into dinner at one of Rundle Street East’s restaurants. A new kid on the block, Paper Tiger opened in April last year, with chef Benjamin Liew bringing Chin Chin-inspired Southeast Asian fusion to Adelaide.

Around the corner at East End Cellars you can snack on small plates and charcuterie or tuck into curried lamb shoulders and 800g rib-eyes while sipping from one of their 15,000 bottles of wine.

Then raise a final glass to Adelaide over a nightcap in one of the East End’s bustling bars before calling it a happy night.

The writer travelled as a guest of South Australian Tourism Commission.

Originally published as How to see the best of Adelaide in a weekend