Friday, March 29, 2013

Day 3 & 4 in Tassie!


Day 3:
We got up our normal early time and were out the door by 9:30ish!  We checked out of our hostel and headed straight to a Penitentiary Chapel.  As I mentioned in previous posts, the government was pretty good at destroying their history, as they didn’t want people knowing about the jails.  So once again, this was only the remains of what was left, which basically was part of church, turned into a courtrooms.  Luckily they still had a portion of the church, which had the original jail cells that were under the church seats.  They also still had the original Gallows, which was cool but freaky at the same time!  After the 75-minute tour we headed to the Mono Art Gallery.

The Mona was all right, I honestly think at this point Emma and I were just don’t with Hobart and ready to move onto a new city, and art might not really be our thing.  The museum was located on a winery and I wish we had more time as I probably would have enjoyed the winery more than the museum.  We did make sure we saw everything, but probably rushed through it!

At this point we had pretty done everything we wanted to do in Hobart so off we went to Port Arthur.  It was a lovely drive, though the up and down hill got annoying with not having cruise control!  Once we got back to the coastline, we kept stopping to see the water and for me to put my feet in the water.  There were also various tourist spots, so I kept stopping at each one.  We didn’t have anything planned for that afternoon and I thought it was a good way to spend it! Though I am pretty sure Emma wanted to kill me at some point, as I would see things last minute and quick turn/stop!

So after all the stopping we finally arrived at the cottage, which to begin with was on a dirt road.   The cottage was small and cute.  It had a small kitchen, big bathroom, living room with bunk beds and a bedroom that had a double size bed.  We had bought food the night before to make our dinner, which was good we did, as there wasn’t anything around us.

Emma took a shower, as we had a ghost tour scheduled and I decided to make dinner.  Well to start there was no stove, it was basically a heat plate that used ceramic pots.  I was totally unsure if it would even work but it worked amazingly.  Thankfully I was only cooking pasta as it was only one heat plate!  We ate our simple dinner and headed to the ghost tour. 

The ghost tour was interesting but of course nothing cool happened.  In the one room, I did get this green dot throughout the pictures, but not sure if it was something or just dust, but the photos were taken without the flash and it was in different parts of the room.  I even cleaned the camera as I thought it was something on my camera, but still kept capturing it!  The buildings looked cool at night and the stories were awesome, but I was very curious how the place actually looked in the daylight.

Day 4:  
Now for those who noticed before, the cottage had bunk beds and a double bed.  Guess were both of us slept?... The bunk beds.  Not sure how old the bed was, but it was so hard, it would have been like sleeping on the floor! I also forgot to mention above that our water for the cottage came from a tank outside that collected rainwater!  As I said, we were in the middle of nowhere!  To make sure we made most of Port Arthur, we were out of the cottage at 9:15am. 

Port Arthur had three different levels you could choose from, so we choose the middle one.  If you ever go (just choose the basic)! The middle level included: introductory tour, access in, lunch, a harbor cruise, tour of the boy’s prison and the guided tour speakers.   We did and used everything, but still wasn’t worth the full money.  We toured a little on our own, and then did the introductory tour.  After that we continued to tour the grounds ourselves.  Part of the problem probably was that Emma and I had had our share of history.  Tour after tour there is only so much one can take in, and I am really not that into history! What we didn’t know was that, we wanted to see the boys prisons, however, there are no remains of the buildings so its literally just woods.  All the tour was a tour guide telling us where things were, and if we had known this we wouldn’t have wanted to do it, lesson learned I suppose. 

Our goal was to leave by 4:00pm, and I am pretty sure we left at 3:00ish and headed to Launceston, our final destination as this is where we would be flying out of.   This drive was through the mid land, so beaches to stop at, just farm after farm after farm!  What made this trip interesting was I got breathalyzed two times with in a half hour in two towns.  Now mind you, I have never been breathalyzed, so I wasn’t sure what to do.  I am pretty sure the first cop thought I was drunk as it took three tries blowing into the machine to read that I was clean as I wasn’t blowing hard enough! We passed a few more on our drive, but were only on the other side of the road.

The interesting part was it only 5:00pm on a Thursday when all of this happened.  In the USA its usually only at night on weekends, but according to Emma they make enough money that they do them a lot throughout the day!   Even after our unplanned stops we made it to Launceston, which was the emptiest city I had ever seen. 

After staying and roughing it out in the cottage, Emma and I had booked a hotel room, as the decent looking hostels were booked.  Also the hotel wasn’t that much more than the hostels, and Emma and I deserved it!  It was so nice to have a big bed, and an actual shower that wasn’t small with people using the toilets or sinks and constantly changing your water temp.  Also to have an actual normal American shower and not some small box that gives you no space! I know.. FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!

Ps. I would put pictures with post, but the free wifi is a little slow!  I will put all my pictures up forever to see when I can! 

Love always, Aloterella :)

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