Tasmania 2 - Hobart
So at 14:00 we arrived at our airbnb in Hobart. It was one unit of this brick row, which is housing constructed in 1847 for shipyard workers. Suitably restored to be nice and comfortable, though the floors were still a spot uneven and it unfortunately smelt strongly of fresh paint. (And the host left us no trashcan at all!?). The location was an old part of town full of these really old houses, now all beautifully restored to make for a very nice part of town (a tour guide later told us horror stories about developers wanting to put parking lots and gas stations in place of historic buildings, fortunately mostly defeated)
Above picture of mom and dad smooching is from later, after dad's race.
The lavender in front of our unit was full of bumblebees! There are no bumblebees on mainland Australia so i was very excited to see these adorable little aerial kittens of the insect world.
Saturday morning the very famous weekly "Salamanca Market" was in full swing on Salamanca Square right at the historic wharf district of Hobart.
There was lots of cool stuff at the market. I really wanted this clock. But not quite $225 of wanting it. Mom bought some insects-in-clear-resin earrings at same booth.
There's a tallship festival afoot at the same wharf area this week. Actually the Melbourne tallship Enterprize that i volunteer on is currently making its way up the coast to here. I could have been sailing on it if it wasn't that my parents are visiting now. Someday I'll join it for that sail.
Dad ran the Tasmania 70.3 Ironman on Sunday. First time it's been put on here. Mom and i volunteered, controlling a pedestrian crossing near the bike transition point. Dad reported the bike portion was the hilliest he's experienced ("there were short hills, long hills, steep hills, and steeper hills"). He came in second in his age group.
On Monday we cleared out of our airbnb and then went to the famous MONA museum of modern art. Unfortunately we had to clear out of our prime parking spot at the airbnb and the only parking anywhere near the ferry departure point was a maximum of 3 hours. Being as the ferry took about forty minutes (including time spent queueing and waiting for it), this left one feeling panicked for time while at the museum. It was fun taking the dedicated museum ferry though. Museum was neat, definitely an immersive experience. I found individual exhibits more often than not obtuse but the overall ambience was the experience i guess, though again the fact that one inevitably feels panicked for time detracted from that. Maybe I'm showing myself as a big prude here but the first gallery was an expressly NSFW one with graphically naked people including what looked like a man being raped by a pitbull (???), and i didn't terribly enjoy it. Because that was the first gallery one is dumped into that was probably the one we saw the most of and then hurried through the rest and i feel like we only saw about a third of everything.
On our return to the car we had a $45 parking fine despite our efforts.
After that we headed south for our next airbnb, where I'm writing this, but that'll be another entry!
It's been beautiful days in the 70s f (20s c), between this trip and last time the weather has been consistently better here in Southern Tasmania than where i live in Victoria.