Vacation from Vacation

Back at the hotel enjoying a bit of Australian television (and by that I mean BBC) I’m using this evening as a chance to unwind from a go-go-go vacation. Stuart left to head back north this evening leaving me a chance to have a relaxing night and repack my bags for my flight tomorrow.

As has been the case every day, we woke up early this morning and were out the door by 8:00 to grab brekkie at Pilgrim Coffee.  I had cocoa waffles with bananas and a peanut butter mouse – they were really delicious.

After breakfast we wandered the city, stopping by the oldest synagogue in Australia, wandering through some of the Uni’s new health-science buildings, and out along the waterfront. We passed the various old customs houses, which grew in size as the city grew.  The large one now houses the Tasmanian parliament. In the Harbour, Australia’s large Antarctic vessel was moored for winter.  Bright orange, it was unmistakable from all the other boats.  Hobart is seemingly one of the closest cities to Antarctica, and therefore the University and city are home to many centres and bases for Antarctic exploration.

We headed over to the main history museum of Hobart, built in and among a nice collection of some of the oldest buildings and warehouses at the wharf.  We breezed through, caring more about the adaptive reuse and architecture than the exhibits themselves.

From the museum, we made the quick walk back up to the hotel to the car and headed out the fifteen minute drive into the suburbs to visit MONA. The Museum of Old and New Art is the fantastically odd private collection of an eccentric billionaire (I would presume).  The museum, built into the side of a cliff on a peninsula, was currently fashioned as a shopping mall (Southgate).  You enter via a tennis court, past an iron-lace cement mixer.  There is no way to describe the building and installations other than absurd; the experience was absolutely confounding.

After perusing the ‘art’ and building, we headed up to the vineyards and brewery onsite, passing the billionaire’s parking spot. His Mercedes, license plate GODXXX, is parked in a spot reserved for god, next to the space reserved for god’s mistress. I suppose the more money you have, the more absurd of a person you can be.

We decided to do a tasting of the beers, ‘MooBrew’ as they are called, and went to the second floor of the winery / brewery building.  The beers were pretty good, a selection of five ranging from pilsner to dark ale, and all “representative of a standard version of each.” It was interesting to try the range, moving from lightest to heaviest (pilsner, hefeweizen, belgo, pale ale, dark ale), demonstrating the array of beer I drink, but never all at once, and highlighting the differences.

After the beer tasting we were done at MONA and headed out to grab some lunch, but first stopped at GASP, a sculpture park on the waterfront a km or so from MONA.  After poking around GASP for a moment (really not much to see) we headed to North Hobart for lunch at a Turkish restaurant. It was good and quite filling, but I did have room to try Turkish delight for the first time, which I found pretty good.

From North Hobart we headed back to the hotel so Stuart could get his stuff together before we headed out for an afternoon coffee in West Hobart.  It was a quick walk (the city really isn’t all that big), and I had a flat white and coconut square and a read of The Mercury before we headed back into the city for Stuart to get his ticket for the bus before we headed back to the city centre for a wander around town.

After Stuart caught the bus, I walked through the city and down to the waterfront before crossing through the city and to Woolies to grab some food for dinner.

All in all, Tasmania has been fantastic, if not exhausting. It has been a great trip, and I am happy to have checked it off the list, though I am also very happy to be heading back to Sydney for the weekend.