Join Tourabout Adelaide on a guided walk of North Adelaide. This suburb of workers' cottages, millionaires' mansions, churches and pubs provides the perfect potted history of South Australia and Adelaide. Take lunch al fresco at The Store (phone (08) 8361 6999) on Melbourne Street, then embark on your North Terrace tour (see the 36-hour tour), now loaded with some extra poignancy.

Catch the Glenelg tram out of the CBD (25 mins) and ride until it terminates at Moseley Square. Practically on the beach, this is where summer kids run through squirty fountains and everyone seems to be eating and drinking. Check out the Discovery Centre at the Town Hall explaining what Glenelg was and is, then take a walk along the jetty, noting Mediterranean-Australians jagging for squid. Join them if you like, or do the inevitable and bliss out on the sand. At lunch time, try the civilised Conservatory in the Stamford which offers essential sea views, but fish and chips out of the Kiosk will get you even closer to the water. Return on the tram and indulge in a night of eating and drinking on Gouger Street.

Away to the Hills; scoot up to Mount Lofty for breakfast at the 710m lookout. Enthusiasts can earn their brekkie in the Summit Cafe (phone (08) 8339 2600) by doing the two-hour hike from Beaumont via Waterfall Gully. Animal lovers go to neighbouring Cleland Wildlife Sanctuary; plant lovers go to the much-overlooked Mount Lofty Botanic Garden.

Lunch in Stirling (Stirling Hotel or Organic Market), then take a scenic drive to Echunga, turning off to Hahndorf. Tour Hans Heysen's sublime property, The Cedars, then experience the good/bad/ugly of ye olde German dorf.

A Barossa wine tour — it's a little over an hour away and if you know your wine it's a must-do. Minibus tours like Groovy Grape make it fun and funky; the likes of Barossa Daimler Tours cost more but are personalised and you do it in a Daimler once used for royal tours in the 1960s.

Indulge for two days in whatever floats your boat.

Sport: If there's a Test match, drop everything for a day at Adelaide Oval. This by necessity starts at The Cathedral (that's the pub up the road, not the big pointy thing) and often ends under the Oval's historic scoreboard where shenanigans are fostered by a bar.

Pandas: They're coming to the Royal Adelaide Zoo in 2009. Expect queues.

Antiques and design classics: Visitors are still astonished by local prices. If you're serious about design and collectables, do a crawl along Magill Road. Not a pretty street, but it's got everything from mahogany Queen Anne to '70s plastic-fantastic.

Night-life: Take a night-time walk on the wild side along Hindley Street, Adelaide's answer to Soho and King's Cross. This inner-city demimonde is undergoing its own transformation and is at the stage when grunge, Bohemia and yupps-ville exist side by side. Shake it up by mixing the likes of The Apothecary 1878, (one of Australia's most beautiful wine bars), the Tequila Rea slammin' bar, The Heavy Metal Bar (overlooked by statues of The Predator fashioned from bike chains) and Isobar.

Sundays are special at Port Adelaide, the suburb that's changing at the speed of light. Do the bric-a-brac markets, and then the two-hour River Cruise ($4, or $14 if you want lunch) for the world's only inner-city dolphins, which have recently taught themselves to tail-walk.

Take lunch at the Lipson Tea Rooms or one of many historic pubs. You don't have to be an enthusiast to enjoy the three museums — the huge National Railway Museum, Aviation Museum and Maritime Museum (though the latter is a real pearler).

Keep the late afternoon for a kayak tour of the Ships' Graveyard, a slightly surreal two-hour experience among mangroves, partially exposed wrecks and with those famous dolphins.