“Don’t be afraid to take an unfamiliar path. Sometimes they are the ones that take you to the best places”.

The coolest moments in life often happen unexpectedly. The most memorable stories begin often with “and all of a sudden…”. The funniest adventures were never planned as they turned out to be as the best often comes when and from you least expect it! Nothing is more exciting than meeting new people, sharing stories and having a good laugh. It is funny like sometimes the most simple things can put a smile on your face and somehow inspire you. My Friday night was the perfect expression of it from sunset to sunrise… be prepared because that was a lonnnnnnnnnnng night!

Have you ever experienced those days, when everything is well planned in advance, the restaurant, the party, the people … and no matter how much you are looking forward to it, for a reason life has other plans for you and the whole thing turn out to be completely different from what was supposed to be?! Well this is exactly what happened to me last Friday as I was originally supposed to attend to a Birthday Party which was cancelled on the very same morning.

But Friday was such a beautiful day that I could not resign to go home after work and I decided to enjoy the evening and go to the beach instead! I had nothing complicated in mind, I just wanted a nice walk, an ice cream and maybe a drink with my friend Sybilla (German) and her husband Warren (Australian) while watching the sunset. That was the plan! And this is exactly what we did.. but after sunset, that’s when the fun really began !

It was one of this warm evenings in Adelaide when it is like 28 degrees and you just want to be outside enjoying the night! So we headed to the CBD a little bit before midnight as Sybilla and I were in the mood for a bit of dancing but Sybilla had ONE request: Let’s go somewhere we don’t go often OR some place we have never been before! Let’s wander out off the beaten tracks she said! And maybe that’s why the whole night turned out to be a surprising series of funny and unexpected moments! Maybe it is my culture or my personality but generally when I go out, I go to one place and I stay there unless it is really boring, but it seems that Aussies go to plenty of different places in the same night, they party from one place to another until they have no more energy to keep going. So I guess we experienced the Aussie way on that night and it was probably one of the coolest night we experienced so far!

It literally did not stop from sunset to sunrise and my blog article won’t do justice to those memorable moments as it is something that you have to experience to really enjoy it: we met tourists from Melbourne who were eager to know which places to visit in Adelaide, where to go out etc and for a time we became like a tourists information centre which is funny when you think that Sybilla is German and I am French and Adelaide has become our city of adoption quite recently, we bumped into a Greek family (brothers and cousins) who were reunited for the weekend to party and were so loud that I became half deaf but they were quite funny, we went to a place where people were dancing like they were not self conscious of their body anymore (quite interesting to witness when you are sober), on our way back home, as we were walking on Hindley street, a fight started on the sidewalk and a homeless (looking like Hagrid from Harry Potter) stood up so we could be safe on his bench and positioned himself in front of us so we could not be hurt by the fight (the police arrived very quickly and the situation was under control rapidly), we had a little chat about working conditions with the staff working on the Tramway line construction on King William as they were working from 6pm to 6am, we walked barefoot all the way down to Rundle street (my feet have never been that dirty in my whole life) and Sybilla quite luckily found a pair of flip flop shoes which fitted right in the street (a good brand by the way), we had a little chat with backpackers who were enjoying the night (it was like 5am and still 25 degrees maybe more) and we talked about France as one worked there for a while. So the night was filled with little moments that maybe taken separately are nothing special but as it kept going on and on, that made our night out quite interesting and funny… but the fun does not stop here… now comes the hilight of this special night.

The street was desert, not a single soul around which was not really surprising at this hour of the night. Behind us it was still dark but in front of us (Adelaide Hills direction) we could see that the sun would rise in a couple of hours, I could not believe that we were up all night and I was happy to go home now. Suddenly out of nowhere two guys appeared and they seemed to go in the same direction as we were heading which made me a bit anxious on the moment… I know this is Adelaide and so far the most scary things I saw were Huntsman spiders and opossum in trees but still… As we were walking along the park, we could see bats flying in the sky, it was for us again something completely new, it is funny how this whole night amused and surprised us (maybe for Aussies it is part of your routine). And quite suprisingly somehow we started to chat with those guys as we were walking in the exact same direction. For a reason one asked me where I lived and I panicked a bit and I said “somewhere over there” and that’s when he made a joke about not being a stalker and somehow surprisingly it kinda acted like an ice breaker,  and that’s how we met Glenn, James (and later their friend Steven)  who happened to be really great guys as in nice, friendly, fun, relaxed and cool. In my opinion they fitted perfectly this typical image you would have of Aussie guys: only the surfing board was missing haha

So when they offered us to go and watch the sunrise altogether from the rooftop of their building, as we are almost neighbors, it was a great way to conclude this crazy night out. And I must say I regret so much I did not capture this moment with my camera. Anyway climbing on this rooftop happened to be more challenging than I thought and I would have never made it without them  (I also still can’t believe that I used one of the guys as a human ladder to make my way up (poor him he had all the dirt from Rundle street on his back as my feet were BLACK from dirt). The view was really nice and it was nothing like I have ever experienced so far, it was so silent as everybody was sleeping, the colours were really beautiful as the sun was rising slowly and you could hear the early birds singing… We just stayed there chatting, waiting for the sun and that’s when Steven (their friend) showed up and joined us on the roof and the fun continued as Steven happen to have a French friend who seems quite an interesting character, so more stories were shared! We talked, we laughed for a couple of hours and I must say it was quite special to be there, almost unreal when you think of the whole situation. I must say it was a bit sad to say goodbye to the boys but quite nice to know that the world is full of nice people and life is full of surprises. As Sybilla and I were walking back to my place, we almost regretted that I did not have the idea earlier to take my bike and go to the Bakery Cannelle  in Norwood where they have the best French croissants in Adelaide because that would have been the perfect French cliché to have croissant on the rooftop at 7am while chatting! Anyway as we were still talking on the sidewalk at my door step, in our party outfits, bare foot… it was quite funny to look at the expression of the early bike riders passing by… like we were some kind of IBIZA GIRLS… I still wonder why  😉