Two night Stay Glenelg, South Australia - Glenelg Motel, Beach Front, Cafe Strip/Jetty Road, and Evening Temptation Twilight Cruise

The Glenelg Giant Wheel.

The Glenelg foreshore and Cafe/Shopping strip (Jetty Road) at the end of the tramline from Adelaide, South Australia is arguably one of the must visit tourist regions of the city. It particularly has a lot to offer families with, not just the beach, but quite a number of playgrounds and grassed reserves as well.

My partner booked us a post weekend, two night (Sunday and Monday), getaway in Glenelg by way of some discount vouchers she secured as part of a promotion encouraging people to visit the region over the Summer.

Glenelg Motel

The recently refurbished rooms of the Glenelg Motel raise your expectations from what the exterior of the rooms themselves suggest, which is a very 1970's vibe of your standard motel with parking right outside your front door (and not much else).

Our room was spacious, and the modern furnishings were easily to the standards of any hotel we've stayed in over the last few years.

The rooms look very modern with everything you'd expect of short term accomodation.

Unusually if you want to have anything more than drinks (tea, coffee, etc) in the room you do have to request additional bowls, plates, and cutlery from reception. You can also purchase a breakfast box which includes everything you need for a fairly basic breakfast for two.

Foreshore and Jetty Road/Cafe/Shopping Strip

On the weekends, especially through the warmer months, this area has always been extremely busy, when we've been here in the past. This time we walked from the motel, on an overcast, cool, Monday Morning (in April) and it was still moderately busy - not so much the beach, which was mostly empty, but definitely Jetty Road was bustling a bit.

We walked out to the end of the jetty where, if you turn around, you can get a photo of the Glenelg foreshore with the Ferris wheel right at the centre of frame.

The Glenelg foreshore from the end of the Jetty. The day started overcast
but by the afternoon all the cloud had cleared into a beautiful, sunny day.

From there we browsed the museum inside the Visitor information centre - which had an exhibition of historic stereograph photography when we were there.

The Colley Hotel

It's safe to say there's no shortage of choice for places to eat along Jetty Road. I'd even speculate the number of cafes out numbers the number of shops by at least two to one, if not three to one.

For lunch we settled on The Colley Hotel's Front Bar which faces directly onto Jetty Road. The menu is pretty standard pub food, which is fine in a street that has plenty international variety food choices if you want to try something different.

View from the Colley Hotel Front Bar looking out onto Jetty Road and the Square.
Don't leave your food unattended on these inside tables - some pretty bold pigeons about!

I went for a very nice steak sandwich (with a side of fries), while my partner had the fish and chips, which she said the fish was really fresh.

By this point the weather was clearing for a cool but sunny afternoon. Which looked promising for our booked sailing experience that was the main highlight of this mini getaway.

Temptation Cruises

A ride on a catamaran sailing yacht is not something that would immediately spring to mind for us to do on a Monday evening, however, my partner got our tickets for free, we're no stranger to boat cruises, and who doesn't want to watch the sunset, with drinks, and music, out on the water?

Sunset on our Twilight Cruise.
These people may even be on their
second glass of wine and still are
having no trouble standing on a boat
slightly rocking in the water.

Temptation Sailing offers a range of experience cruises, ours was the Twilight Cruise, which is an hour and a half round trip along the Glenelg coastline, leaving from Marina Pier at 5pm (in April).  Their other tours offer similar boating experiences, with exception to their wild dolphin tour, where you can even swim with dolphins if that's something you'd like to do.

I will say I was expecting a little more of a choppy experience in terms of the boat rocking around - being a smaller boat than the cruise liners we've been on. Surprisingly the boat was incredibly stable once you get out of the port. Probably partly due to it running on engine power the whole time - all the sails remained unfurled.

Most people had no trouble walking around with a couple of glasses of wine, commandeered from the bar, to take back to their partner elsewhere on the boat. Definitely a good, first boating experience if you're concerned about motion sickness. That said, neither my partner or I trusted ourselves to walk around the boat at all. Since neither of us are drinkers, it wasn't a problem.

Tours have space for up to 50 people, and ours looked pretty booked out. Unfortunately there isn't actually seating for 50 people in the sense of actual seats. Bench seat length cushions are strategically placed around the upper deck to sit on. I would recommend getting there early if you want space on one of these.

Otherwise, you may want to bring your own 'travel' cushion should you get stuck sitting directly on the deck floor like us - which was not great for either of us to be honest - though it didn't affect our enjoyment of the experience too much.

My partner and I have a running joke that if we're going anywhere to watch a sunset, there won't be a good one. It'll either be so cloudy the suns rays just don't get through at any stage, or you'll get a cloudless sunset, which is better but not spectacular. We got the latter sunset this time. Still had good, bright orange sky and the sun did properly sink below the horizon rather than disappear behind distant clouds.

The Strand Restaurant.
Photo: The Strand Website.

The Strand Restaurant/Cafe

Our cruise finished at about 6:30pm giving us plenty of time to find somewhere for dinner. We weren't really sure what we wanted so we just strolled up and back Jetty Road. My partner suggested pizza might be a way to go. 

While we were checking the menu at the entrance to The Strand, one of the staff spotted us and convinced us to give their pizza a try (well he answered our questions anyway - it didn't take a lot of convincing).

While The Strand's website claims the restaurant is just 'steps' away from the beach, it's quite a considerable number of steps away, getting more in the area of Jetty Road where the ratio of shops to cafes is starting to balance out. If you're looking for it, and can't see it, chances are you haven't walked far enough.

Being a Monday night the largish restaurant was virtually empty. We arrived just as the only other patrons we saw were leaving. We ordered a garlic bread starter, followed by a BBQ chicken pizza to share.

While the pizza was definitely tasty (we took the remaining large slice home) the chef was possibly a bit too liberal with the BBQ sauce, making the middle of the pizza a little too liquid. This resulted in it being hard to pick up a slice without the topping sliding off, or being dragged off by a still attached string of cheese. Still a great tasting pizza though.

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That was pretty much our post weekend stay. Tuesday morning we checked out of the motel, heading for home. 

Glenelg makes for a very easy short stay getaway. Almost everything is within walking distance. We didn't drive to anything once we arrived at the motel.

There's definitely far more to see and do than we experienced, particularly for families. Plus, you are right on the tramline should you want to head into Adelaide city for any reason.

Definitely a region worth visiting.