Roomer

“The elevator buttons are brass and slightly warm to the touch, like someone just pressed every single one before you.”

The tram slides past so close to the footpath you could reach out and slap its flank. King William Street at five in the afternoon is all office workers with loosened collars, a busker playing something that might be Crowded House but could also be Ed Sheeran, and the particular Adelaide light that makes sandstone glow like it's been dipped in honey. I've just dragged a suitcase up from the Adelaide Railway Station — a ten-minute walk south, flat the whole way — and I'm standing outside a building that looks like it should house a bank from 1910. It did, actually. The old Colonial Mutual Life building, heritage-listed, all arched windows and carved stone, now wearing a discreet sign that says Mayfair Hotel. A woman in a high-vis vest is hosing down the pavement next door. She nods. I nod. Adelaide.

Inside, the lobby smells like something floral and expensive — not aggressively so, just enough that you register it and then forget it. The ceilings are high in a way that modern hotels never bother with. There's marble, there's dark timber, there's a staircase that curves like it's posing for a photograph. The whole thing leans into its heritage bones without turning them into a costume. It's a building that knows what it is and doesn't need to explain itself.

Sleeping in the old vault

The room is quieter than a street-facing address on Adelaide's busiest road has any right to be. Double glazing, probably, though the windows are the kind that look original and make you wonder how they managed it. The bed is wide and firm — not the marshmallow-soft type that swallows you, but the kind where you wake up and your back doesn't hate you. White linen, a headboard in deep navy, and a bedside lamp that actually produces enough light to read by, which shouldn't be remarkable but somehow always is.

The bathroom has that black-and-white tile pattern that says heritage without saying museum. Shower pressure is strong, water runs hot within thirty seconds, and there's a rainfall head plus a handheld. The toiletries are Le Labo, which feels like a choice someone made rather than a bulk order. One complaint: the bathroom mirror fogs instantly and the little heated patch in the centre is about the size of a postcard. You can see your nose. Maybe one eye. Good luck with the rest.

What defines the Mayfair isn't really the rooms, though. It's the rooftop. Hennessy Bar sits on the top floor and opens out to a terrace where you can see across the Adelaide Oval precinct, the parklands wrapping the city like a green belt, and on a clear evening, the hills turning purple behind everything. The cocktail list is ambitious — I order something with native pepperberry and gin that arrives in a coupe glass and tastes like a dare I'm glad I took. A couple next to me are sharing a cheese board and arguing gently about whether to walk to Gouger Street or Chinatown for dinner. The answer, for the record, is both — they're practically the same walk, five minutes south.

“Adelaide is a city that trusts you to figure it out — the grid is simple, the trams are free in the CBD, and nobody rushes you.”

Downstairs, the Mayfair Kitchen handles breakfast and dinner. Morning service is solid without being theatrical — good coffee, eggs done properly, fruit that actually tastes ripe. The gym is small and tucked into what feels like a repurposed office, but it has a Peloton, free weights, and enough space that you don't bump elbows unless someone else shows up, which at 6:30 AM on a Wednesday, nobody did.

The location is the thing, though. You're on King William Street, which means you're on the tram line — free rides within the city zone, stops every few hundred metres, running until midnight. Rundle Mall is a three-minute walk north. The Central Market, one of the best covered food markets in Australia, is an eight-minute walk south. I buy a bag of almonds from a stall run by a man who tells me his family has been there since 1975 and that I should also try the olives. I try the olives. He's right.

The hotel's Wi-Fi holds up for video calls and streaming, though I notice it hiccups once around 11 PM — brief enough to be forgivable, long enough to lose a paragraph of notes I was typing. The corridors are long and carpeted in a pattern that's either Art Deco revival or someone's fever dream, depending on how much pepperberry gin you've had. I find it charming. Your mileage may vary.

Morning on King William

Checkout is early, and King William Street at seven in the morning is a different animal. The busker is gone. The trams are running but half-empty. A man in a suit is eating a meat pie on a bench outside the Town Hall, and a magpie is watching him with the patient intensity of someone who knows the odds are in their favour. The sandstone still glows, but softer now, the light coming from the east and catching the Mayfair's upper floors in a way that makes the old building look like it's been here forever and plans to stay.

I walk south toward the station. The free tram passes me and I let it go — the walk is flat, the air is cool, and the Central Market vendors are already unloading crates of stone fruit from the Barossa. If you're arriving by train, don't bother with a taxi. Just walk. You'll pass the market on the way, and you'll want to stop.

Rooms at the Mayfair start around 200 USD a night, which buys you heritage architecture, a bed that respects your spine, a rooftop with a view worth lingering over, and a front door that opens directly onto Adelaide's main tram line and the easy, walkable grid that makes this city quietly one of the most navigable in Australia.