United nonstops return to Adelaide: Your guide to South Australia

Presented byUnitedUnited is bringing back nonstop service to AdelaideHere’s how to make the most of South AustraliaBy Colby KirkpatrickIt took me several trips to Australia to realize I’d been skipping one of its best parts.It took me several trips to Australia to realize I’d been skipping one of its best parts.I’d visited the country a handful of times before, but this was my first trip to Adelaide and my first time exploring South Australia. Within a few days, I was eating my way through a 150-year-old market, walking among kangaroos and wallabies, blending my own bottle of shiraz, kayaking alongside wild dolphins, and bopping between breathtaking beaches, rolling hills, and wine country.And getting there from the U.S. is about to become considerably easier.United is bringing back its seasonal service between San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Adelaide Airport (ADL) beginning Dec. 17. The route, now entering its second season, gives travelers the only nonstop connection between the U.S. and Adelaide, with schedules subject to change. Service is scheduled to run through Feb. 10, 2027.Flight detailsSFO – ADLDec 17, 2026–Feb 10, 2027 · Boeing 787-9Adelaide turned out to be an ideal home base for seeing just how much variety South Australia packs into a relatively small radius.The state capital and largest city in the region still manages to feel surprisingly approachable. Its central business district mixes modern towers with low-slung stone cottages and other remnants of its colonial-era architecture, while the entire city center is wrapped in parklands that date back to Adelaide’s original 1837 city plan.From the center of town, I could be among the rolling hills and small villages of the Adelaide Hills, heading toward the coast, or making my way into wine country — all in roughly half an hour.That is, assuming you are prepared to drive on the left. My first encounter with my Australian rental car began with me confidently getting into the wrong front seat and momentarily wondering where someone had put the steering wheel.For my stay, I checked into Hotel Indigo Adelaide Markets. My suite had a separate living area and a large balcony with sweeping views across the city and toward the hills. The hotel also has Merrymaker, a lively rooftop bar 16 floors above the surrounding market district.Getting there: The United Polaris experienceBefore I could start bouncing between wineries, markets, and wildlife encounters, though, I first had to cross the Pacific. United’s San Francisco-to-Adelaide service is scheduled to operate on a Boeing 787-9, and I got to make the overnight journey in United Polaris business class. After spending some time in the Polaris Lounge at SFO, I boarded and settled into my lie-flat seat for what was essentially going to be an entire night in the air.Dinner started with tomato tartare and crostini, followed by braised short rib with risotto Milanese, garlic green beans, and fresh gremolata. It was genuinely tasty, to the point that I could almost forget I was eating dinner at 35,000 feet.Even more memorably, I got my first experience with United’s Polaris sundae service. My extremely attentive flight attendant recommended I simply go for all the fixings, and I took her advice. She was right.From there, I put the lie-flat seat to good use and got a substantial stretch of sleep before waking for breakfast closer to Adelaide. I went with a mushroom omelet and chicken sausage, which provided a convenient marker that it was time to stop thinking in San Francisco time and get onto my new schedule.That rhythm ended up being one of the biggest benefits of flying the route in Polaris. Dinner, a real block of sleep, and breakfast before landing gave the flight something resembling a normal overnight routine. By the time I arrived in Adelaide, I felt far more functional than I normally do after crossing that many time zones and was ready to start exploring almost immediately.AdventureIndulgenceCultureChoose your Adelaide: Three ways to experience South AustraliaOver the next few days, I got to see several very different sides of the region. Looking back, most of what I loved about South Australia fell pretty neatly into one of three camps: adventure, indulgence, and culture.I managed to sample a little of all three, but depending on how you like to travel, any one could easily become the backbone of a trip here.What’s on your plateAdelaide Central MarketMy adventure itinerary began less than half a block from my hotel at Adelaide Central Market.The market has been operating since 1869 and today packs more than 70 artisans under one roof. What struck me more than its age, though, was how much it still felt like a place Adelaide actually uses.At lunchtime, workers from the surrounding central business district mixed with families, visitors, and people picking up groceries. Around them were rows of fresh produce, flowers, bakeries, bookstores, sweet shops, and food stalls representing cuisines from around the world.I did my best to sample accordingly.I had some of the best paella I’ve had in a long time, worked my way through a few of the savory pies and rolls Australia does especially well, and found my favorite at Smiley’s: a hot chicken roll that I would have happily eaten again the next day.Dessert sent me down another very Australian rabbit hole. Honeycomb is a flavor I encounter constantly here and almost never back home, and I found a honeycomb cornflake slice that was essentially the Australian cousin of a Rice Krispies treat.The food scene spills beyond the market, too. Elsewhere in the central business district, streets like Peel and Leigh narrow into pedestrian-friendly laneways packed with wine bars, restaurants, cocktail spots, and cafes.And if there is one thing I’m reminded of every time I return to Australia, it is that Australians take coffee very seriously. My favorite stop was Exchange Coffee, where the menu seemed capable of accommodating essentially any permutation of coffee I could come up with.How to experience natureCleland WildlifeFrom there, I headed into the Adelaide Hills for Cleland Wildlife Park.I have been to enough petting zoos in the U.S. to approach almost any animal experience with a little skepticism. Cleland was nothing like that.The park centers on conservation and education, and many of its kangaroos and wallabies move freely through large natural areas where visitors can walk among them. Adult admission costs AU$35.80.I spent much of my visit wandering between animals that seemed largely unconcerned by my presence. At one point, I spotted a baby wallaby riding in its mother’s pouch with just its little head poking out, which may have been the single cutest thing I saw on the entire trip.I also paid extra for a koala encounter and met Tek, a 10-year-old male whose fur was far softer than I expected. A keeper remained beside him throughout the experience, supplying eucalyptus and making sure the interaction stayed very much on his terms.The keeper also informed me that Tek might have better labor protections than most humans. After a 30-minute stretch of close-up visitor encounters, he gets two complete days off from that kind of work entirely, which made me both laugh and feel a little jealous.Go beyond sightseeingAdelaide Oval RoofClimbFor the final stop on my adventure itinerary, I traded ground-level bush walks for the roof of Adelaide Oval.The stadium manages to feel both thoroughly modern and distinctly historic, with its grassy northern mound, enormous fig trees, and century-old scoreboard still intact amid the contemporary grandstands. Those trees also have a wonderfully petty backstory: They were planted, at least in part, to stop people on nearby Montefiore Hill from watching games inside the Oval for free.For an even better view, I signed up for Adelaide Oval’s RoofClimb. After changing into a jumpsuit and clipping into a harness, I followed my guide onto a track running across the stadium roof. From the top, Adelaide suddenly made much more sense geographically. I could trace the river through the city, see the Adelaide Hills rising in one direction, and look toward the coastline in another.At the turnaround point came the obligatory opportunity to lean backward over the edge, arms out, with my harness very much attached.A standard daytime RoofClimb takes about two hours and starts at AU$125 for adults and AU$95 for children ages 8 to 15. By the time I unclipped, it had landed in a very specific sweet spot: scenic, informative, and just adrenaline-inducing enough to make me feel like I had earned the view.What’s on your plateAptosMy indulgence itinerary began with one of the most elaborate meals I have ever experienced.Restaurant Aptos sits inside a converted church in Stirling, in the Adelaide Hills, and serves just 14 diners at a time. Its 16-course tasting menu unfolds progressively across three interconnected dining rooms.From the moment I walked in, it felt like stepping into another world.The first course made it abundantly clear what kind of evening I was in for. I was handed what was essentially a branch dotted with five native Australian fruits and instructed to lick each flavor directly off the wood.Things only got more unusual from there.I tried crocodile tongue for the first time, paired with Geraldton wax flavors, and kangaroo seasoned with native Australian ingredients. The latter was considerably more tender and less gamey than I expected.Across the 16 courses, the flavor combinations were at times so layered that my first reaction was almost sensory overload. I would take a bite, spend a few seconds trying to work out what exactly I was tasting, and then suddenly everything would settle into place.Each course also arrived with a beautifully designed card detailing the ingredients and preparation. By dessert, I had a stack of 16 that felt less like a menu and more like a collection of art prints I wanted to take home and frame.How to experience natureMount Lofty GardenThe following day, I stayed in the Adelaide Hills but traded a tasting menu for a pair of walking shoes at Mount Lofty Botanic Garden.Calling it a botanical garden almost undersells it.Spread across 97 hectares, Mount Lofty showcases cool-climate plants from around the world, with sections devoted to flora from places including South America, Africa, and Asia.The landscape felt closer to a nature preserve than a manicured city park. I wandered past ponds, streams, flowers, and dense pockets of forest, with the scenery seeming to change every few minutes.The birdlife also made me stop more than once. One thing I never quite get over in Australia is how exotic even an everyday bird can look compared with what I am accustomed to seeing in New York. At home, my baseline is largely pigeons and crows. Here, seemingly commonplace birds can look like something escaped from an aviary.Admission is free, making Mount Lofty an easy way to spend a few hours in the hills.From there, I continued to Hahndorf, Australia’s oldest surviving German settlement. Its main street is lined with heritage buildings, bakeries, pubs, boutiques, and antique stores.I stopped at Otto’s Bakery for a vanilla slice, one of those Australian desserts whose name does very little to explain what it actually is. Rather than cake, it is a thick layer of silky vanilla custard sandwiched between crisp sheets of puff pastry.Go beyond sightseeingd’Arenberg WineryThe final stop on my indulgence itinerary took me south to McLaren Vale and d’Arenberg, where the Osborn family has been growing grapes since 1912.The first thing I noticed, though, had nothing to do with wine.The five-story d’Arenberg Cube rises above the vineyards in a jumble of black, white, glass, and mirrors. Against the rolling countryside, it looks a little like a Rubik’s Cube Salvador Dalí might have designed himself. Fittingly, one floor houses an exhibition of Dalí sculptures and graphic works.My main reason for visiting was the Blending Bench, a hands-on experience that lets you create and bottle your own wine.By sheer luck, I was the only person booked for my session. In front of me were three shiraz samples made from vines planted in 1898, 1969, and 1999, and all three tasted remarkably different.Using pipettes, a worksheet, and plenty of trial and error, I measured different percentages into my glass, tasted the result, and adjusted from there.I went in convinced the 1898 sample, easily my favorite on its own, would make up most of my final bottle. But tiny changes in the proportions completely altered the flavor. Eventually, I settled on something I liked even more than any of the three components separately.Then I got to bottle, name, and label a full 750-milliliter version to take home.The Blending Bench costs AU$120 and takes about 75 minutes. Between the architecture, art, vineyards, and leaving with a bottle I had actually created myself, it was easily one of the more memorable winery visits I have had.What’s on your plateAfricolaFor the culture itinerary, I started with a restaurant I had been excited about well before I ever landed in Adelaide.Africola has one of the most distinct visual identities I have ever seen from a restaurant, from its website and branding to the space itself.Once inside, though, what stood out was how much it felt like a neighborhood institution.More than once, I watched members of the staff greet diners with the easy familiarity of people who had clearly been coming back for years. I sat at the bar, which gave me a front-row view into the open kitchen and all of the plating and preparation happening behind it.I started with the crispy chicken tea sandwich, one of Africola’s signatures. Soft white bread encloses crisp chicken skin, with peri-peri drippings served alongside for dipping. Think of it as a tiny, rich South African cousin of a French dip.Then came the peri-peri chicken itself, smoky, spicy, and incredibly savory, along with salt-baked Dutch cream potatoes with labneh, za’atar, and chives that landed on my palette like an elegant twice-baked potato. I also ordered the cos lettuce with buttermilk, dill, and shallot, essentially Africola’s much more interesting answer to a wedge salad.When everything was placed in front of me, I was mildly horrified by how much food I had ordered. About an hour later, I had eaten most of it and was contemplating whether I could simply roll myself through the central business district and back to my hotel.It ended up being one of my favorite meals of the entire trip.How to experience natureBotanic GardenThe next afternoon, I headed to Adelaide Botanic Garden on the eastern edge of the city center.The 50-hectare garden is free to enter and mixes outdoor collections with ponds, shaded paths, historic buildings, museums, and glasshouses.One of those spaces is the Palm House, a Victorian glasshouse from the 1870s that now holds plants from Madagascar, including species threatened or endangered in the wild.Nearby, the Museum of Economic Botany ended up being one of my favorite stops. The collection includes enormous seeds, preserved plant specimens, and historical models centered on the many ways humans have used plants for food, medicine, textiles, inks, and other parts of everyday life.Taken together, the garden felt less like simply spending an afternoon looking at pretty plants and more like a reminder of how deeply the natural world has shaped the way people eat, build, heal, create, and live.Another way to dig deeper is through the garden’s Aboriginal Native Plant and Social History Tour. Led by an Aboriginal guide, the 90-minute experience explores traditional uses of native plants for food, medicine, and tools, along with Aboriginal social history, cultural practices, and relationships with the land. Tickets are currently AU$42 per person, plus booking fees.Go beyond sightseeingDolphin Kayak TourFor the final stop of my trip, I traded the central business district for a morning on the water at the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary near Garden Island.I joined the three-hour Dolphin Sanctuary Kayak Tour, where my guide, Kendall, first walked us through the basics before leading our group onto the water.We paddled between mangrove-lined creeks and the partially submerged remains of old ships. The Garden Island ships’ graveyard contains 25 known vessels abandoned between 1909 and 1945 after they became obsolete, damaged, or no longer economical to maintain.Farther into the mangroves, I started getting serious Florida Everglades energy, only without quite as many things I was concerned might kill me.Kendall, who happens to be an American from Florida herself, was equal parts kayak instructor and naturalist, filling us in on dolphin behavior, conservation efforts, and the maritime history behind the wrecks as we paddled.Then came the moment I had convinced myself probably would not happen.I am an eternal pessimist when it comes to any wildlife activity involving the phrase “possible sighting,” but we ended up spending several minutes alongside a mother dolphin and her calf.The pair moved back and forth through the water together, surfacing side by side, disappearing beneath us, and then looping around again.The tour costs AU$79 per adult, lasts about three hours, and includes the necessary kayaking gear.Between the shipwrecks, ancient mangroves, and a wild dolphin sighting I had fully talked myself out of expecting, it was a fitting way to finish a trip that consistently surprised me.Bottom lineIn only a few days, Adelaide gave me a version of Australia I had not experienced on any of my previous visits.I could spend the morning in the center of a major city, the afternoon walking through vineyards or alongside kangaroos, and the evening eating ingredients I had never heard of before the trip. More importantly, almost none of it required spending hours getting from one place to the next.That is ultimately what made Adelaide work so well as a home base. Whether I leaned into adventure, indulgence, or culture, there was a different once-in-a-lifetime experience within easy reach.Beginning Dec. 17, United’s returning seasonal San Francisco-to-Adelaide service will make it easier for U.S. travelers to arrive directly in South Australia and start exploring, with schedules subject to change. So take it from me — don’t sleep on South Australia, unless it’s from the comfort of a Polaris Business Class seat on the way there.Flight detailsSFO – ADLDec 17, 2026–Feb 10, 2027 · Boeing 787-9