TASSIE!!!!!!!!!

Hey folks :)  We just got back from a wonderful trip to Tasmania!!!  If you were wondering, it is one of the states in Australia.  It is an island state and it is only 150 miles south of Melbourne.  And it is beautiful!!!!  (We took 650 pictures-- that's how amazing we thought everything was!!-- don't worry I'm not going to put them all up here!

We left Thursday morning SUPER early (we had to wake up at 4AM, yuck)  Flying domestic in Australia is so funny-- I literally did not show any sort of ID once while at the airport... whatevs it made it very quick!  So we arrived in Hobart, TAS around 8am, got our (very crucial this trip) rental car and set off for some brekkie!  We settled on a restaurant on the harbor with a beautiful view of the city and lots and lots of boats!  Hobart is really not a very big city, even though its the capitol and the largest in Tassie, only 200,000 people.  But its on the side of a mountain and a harbor and is full of all the same buildings from when it was fist settled in the 1800's so its pretty much adorable :)

After a very important cuppa coffee we headed back to the airport to pick up our French travel partner, Sam, or Sammy as he is now called after this Tassie trip!  He is one of Brians co workers and joined us on our holiday!

We first left for the #1 Tasmanian tourist destination- Port Arthur.  It is only about an hour from Hobart on the Tasman Peninsula.  Not sure if you were aware but after the British discovered Australia, they used it primarily as a gigantic prison.  So in the early 1800's if someone in England or Ireland got caught pick-pocketing, or owed an outstanding debt, or any other criminal activity the would be transported to Australia- then if they were bad once they got here they would be transported to Port Arthur.  Apparently is was a very strict and harsh punishment to be sent here but it was one the most beautiful places I have ever seen!  The convicts built all the buildings but later on, after the prison was no longer in use, they had a bush fire that burned all the timber in the buildings and then later there was an earthquake that crumbled a few.... soooo what they were left with were ruins of the penal society.  I took lots of pictures  :)

In front of the Isle of the Dead

It was actually hard to narrow it down to those!  The whole place kind of reminded me of a castle :)  Since its not-- its a huge convict site- it has a touch of creepiness to it that was pretty cool, they even say that its haunted!!! 

After a quick lunch we left for our next stop along the Tasman Peninsula, only a few minutes away, up a long narrow dirt road to an incredible beach!  I wasn't even expecting the bright blue water-- it was so tropical looking!  Did I mention that what Brian and I generally do on these sorts of trips is just stop at any place that has a brown historic sign or any view point turn off.... usually it turns out to be something fantastic, like this beach!  After spending some time basking in the sun we decided it was time to move on.  Before leaving for this trip, Brian brought home about 4 books on Tasmania, one being, 100 walks in Tasmania, so we had a few hikes picked out for the rest of the afternoon!  (You will probably be able to tell that Brian planned most of this trip, its very nature/outdoorsy here in Tassie-- 40% of the whole state is part of some national park!- Seriously!)  The views were breathtaking.... Especially this one...

It looks pretty magical, huh!  It was acting like it was going to rain the whole time so I started cracking my whip to get us there to capture the views and back before we were stranded out in the Tasmanian wilderness in the rain..... Here are a few more from our day1 hike. 

Devils Kitchen (no sink here, just a massive straight down cliff)

Waterfall

We saw heaps of wildlife :)

After making it safely back to the car, and without getting rained on, we made our way back to Hobart for dinner!  While at dinner we made the executive decision to head up to Maria Island (pronounced Ma-rye-ah) in the morning.  We needed to leave early to make the 9:30 am ferry to get over to the island.  Soooo, yet again we had a super early morning.  Plus we needed to stop at a grocery store to pack a lunch since the island has NO food, drinks, anything.  In the morning we left for the ferry, it departs from a very small town (which in our Lonely Planet Tasmania book says the only thing that is there is the ferry and a giant pile of wood chips that Brian wanted to check out- NO that did not happen, don't worry!-- although he did sneak in a picture of it from the ferry... he's a strange one...)

Arriving at Maria Island

For our day trip we rented bicycles.. I was pretty scared...I haven't ridden a bike since I was probably 13 years old-- that was a LONG time ago.  But as it turns out it was "just like riding a bike!" and I was able to actually go forward... other than that, I was horrible, if I tried to look off to the side at the scenery, my whole bike would turn that way and I would wobble all over the place!  We first went for a ride UP UP UP to the top of a cliff (not easy on a bicycle)-- it was amazing (a little scary but so beautiful I was hardly afraid I would plummet to my death haha)

Then we left for a 2 hour bike ride to another area of the island... It was really nice (although by the end of it, all three of us decided it was a bit too long!)  We saw lots of wildlife, beautiful beaches and cliffs, all while cruising on our bicycles :)

had to walk our bikes up the hills when we got too tired-- this was frequent for me

boing :)

this is an echidna-- a spiney anteater-- its pretty cute!

Black swans in the ocean

clear ocean water!!!

We decided to stop for lunch of ham, peanut butter and smoked salmon sandwiches at this beautiful secluded beach.  By this time I was exhausted and so excited to take off my tennis shoes (they call them "runners" here and Brian and I decided that this makes much more sense considering most people dont play tennis in their tennis shoes) and get my feet in the cold tasmanian sea!!  After a pretty long break (and me getting nervous we were going to miss our ferry back, as they only have 2 a day, morning and afternoon, other than that you have to camp out there and I was NOT going to let that happen!) we headed to the painted cliffs!  The problem with there being 2 boys on this trip is that they are idiots and keep stopping for crazy reasons.. I heard the phrase "don't worry Ill catch up with you," from Brian about a 100 times, leaving me alone in the Tasmanian wilderness-- just me and my bicycle... but he did return with these 2 pictures so I forgave him...

And then we had finally made it to the painted cliffs-- Im not totally sure why these cliffs look like this (and wikipedia has not told me more than I already knew- that they are there)  But its really really cool...  and Im not even a rock person, I cannot imagine how geologist would love it!

Such amazing patterns in the cliffs!!!!

Don't worry-- we made it back to the ferry in time and we even had time to see the penal colony they had on the island-- you can now rent out the old prison cells to stay the night (super creepy- they say it's haunted too, no thanks)

We got back into Hobart, had another delicious dinner on the harbor and called it a night-- 2 LONG days!  I was looking forward to exploring Hobart the next day (and sleeping in!)

Well as it turns out the sunrises at 5:30am during the summer in Hobart sooo sleeping in is kind of tricky!  Since we were already up we decided to go ahead and head up to Mt. Wellington, the mountain above the city, before the clouds cover the entire view.  By the time we make it up, we are too late, we were covered in clouds and it was freezing!  Not to worry--- we took a few hazy pictures then cruised down a bit and found a little spot to pull over the car and take tons of great clear pictures of Hobart from the top of the mountain!

The pure waters of Tasmania :)  It really nice up there, but pretty chilly!  On the way down I made a phone call to the Cascade Brewery-- the oldest running brewery in Australia- and got in for a tour! Very exciting considering it included free samples! Yum!  The beers from Tasmania are the best in Australia!  Once we got there we enjoyed an hour tour of the facility and drank our beers (actually they also make juice and had a delicious apple/raspberry juice!) out in the gardens.. it was really pretty-- they were actually setting up for a wedding that evening!

We then left for a lunch at the Salamance Market-- a street market which is supposed to be the best in all of Australia.  It was the best Ive been too at least-- I got a delicious baked spud, bought some tomato/chili jam and cookie cutters!  Since the boys were not super into the wonderful shopping experience we moved along quickly to the next destination on our Hobart tour- the MONA museum- the Museum of Old and New Art.  Sam and I had both heard great things about this world renown museum stuck in little ole Hobart so we decided to give it a fair go!  I'm really not a big museum fan generally, but this place was wild.  I saw some of the strangest things there!  On of the pieces of art was a machine build by an artist that made poo (so gross) because he said that "most modern art was crap."  That wasn't even the weirdest thing we saw.  Seriously.  After we walked through the entire place (which was actually in a really cool underground building) we left to go to dinner then call it a night!

On our final morning in Tassie we woke up early, yet again, to check out the beautiful Wineglass bay, 2 1/2 hours north of Hobart in the Freycinct National Park.  As soon as we arrived in the park we stopped for a little (little as in huge) seafood brekkie of oysters, mussels and scallops!  My favorite is mussels and I had been waiting all trip to eat the delicious Tasmanian mussels!  They did not disappoint.
We then set off for our final day of hikes!  But first we spotted some very friendly wallabies!

Once we got to the top, there was a beautiful view point of Wineglass bay!  It has been voted multiple times as one of the top ten best beaches!  I could definitely see why, although, it was very hard to get to, and the water was so cold you cannot get in.  I guess its just one of the best beaches to look at!  Anyways, we enjoyed looking at it :)

After the viewpoint, Brian decided that was not good enough and we hiked on down to the water!

It was great and we were ready for a little break after that... but Brian persisted and next thing I know we were headed on a 3 hour hike around the mountain!

more hiking.... but then we finally got to another beautiful beach!!

Once we got back to the car I had one more treat in store-- I got to pet a wild wallaby!!  I have no idea why it let me pet him but it was really amazing!  Afterwards we drove back to the airport to get home!  We got a few beautiful pictures on the drive home.  We arrived in Melbourne very late and I had to wake up very early (AGAIN) to nanny the precious kiddos the next morning!  It was a great trip and both Brian and I fell in love with Tassie!  We are already thinking of when we can go back!  Ok, I'm going to show you these last few pictures then call it a night!  Sorry this is the longest post in the history of blogspot.  Love ya!