Tasmania

Day 244

"Get Away, run away, fly away
Lead me astray to dreamer's hideaway"


Hmm...Melbourne. I only spent 2 days in Melbourne but I did form quite a strong opinion of the city already. Whereas Sydney is stunningly beautiful, Melbourne is just pretty. I think biggest difference is that in Melbourne, you need to have friend or preferably group of friends to really appreciate it, then I think it might even be more enjoyable city than Sydney. But...for solo traveller Sydney is so much better. Within 2 days I couldn't really find places in Melbourne to hang around, whereas in Sydney there are numerous: Opera House park, Botanical Gardens, Darling Harbour, Circular Quay, The Rocks, etc. In Melbourne you really need to know where you are going. In Sydney you can just head to Circular Quay and be awed by the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. They say that Sydney is more touristy and thats true, but still I was easily able to find quiet spots right in middle of town to enjoy picnic, book and watch amazing views. I wasn't able to find any in Melbourne yet. Everywhere I went there was so many people and so much action going on.

Oh, and then there was the tram episode. Our infamous tour guide Lawrence told us that ticket inspectors in trams are so rare that we shouldn't buy tickets when going around in trams. Well, on my first tram ride there was inspector. So what I did was putting on my best possible russian accent, waving 5 dollar note at him saying "Can I buy ticket?"(obviously I should have bought one before entering tram...). Dont know how convincing I was but managed got only warning hehe :-)

So after 2 days I was off to Tasmania with ferry Spirit Of Tasmania, which apparently is built in Finland btw. Ferry was more or less similar to ferries which travel between Helsinki and Tallinn(or Stockholm) with plenty of places to get drunk. Pretty sunset btw when we left Melbourne harbour.

Ferry ride itself was quite short. We left at 20:00 and arrived at 06:00 next morning to Devonport, Tasmania. I think I managed to get about 3-4h sleep in reclining seat I had booked(heck, only 94 dollars!). From Devonport it was yet another 4.5h bus ride to Hobart, Tasmania's capital.

When I finally arrived to Hobart at around 12:30 I got off bus and first thing I see is teenage boy walking past and vomiting his stomach out right in front of me. He should have turned on to me, smiled and said "Welcome to Tasmania", then it would have been perfect hehe.

Anyways, after first encounter with Hobart this city has improved day by day. So far I like this town more and more each day. It's not very big town but big enough(200,000 people), very european like and general drinking culture here is closer to what we have in Finland. Nightclubs are not big thing here, people just sit around in charming pubs getting drunk and swapping stories each evening. Very nice and inviting atmosphere. Oh, and seafood here is amazing.

Today I went to Cascade brewery about 5km from town centre.

As I got there I asked wheter there were any room for brewery tours today and I was told that all were already booked...and this was at 11am! Weird, I had no problem getting into tour straight away in Brisbane and in Dunedin but here they have huge queues for some reason. Well, I just decided to skip the tour then and go straight to business which was tasting. Managed to taste 7 beers and was generally very impressed by the quality of their beer. They even had beer quiz where they served 6 different beers in small tasting glasses and you had to guess which beer it was. If you got 3 out of 6 right, you won "Cascade Beer Taster"-cap. I got 4 out of 6 so yet another ugly cap to go along with my 5E-cap :-)

Tomorrow my big 6-day Tasmania tour starts then. That also means I won't be able to update blog until tour is finished. Can't wait to get out there and see this island's nature.