On Wednesday morning, we headed up the highway to Hobart, stopping for a coffee in Sorrel. We also found an Internet Cafe; where we booked some accommodation in Hobart using Wotif.
It only took a couple of hours to get to Hobart from Port Arthur and we were there by late morning. After checking in at the hotel, we walked into town to look at the shops. Hobart is a rather compact city and it wasn’t far at all to get to the main shopping area. Having done the central city shopping block twice, we had some sushi for lunch in the food centre at the Cat & Fiddle Arcade. Then we walked down to Salamanca Place to look at the shops and galleries that can be found in this rather trendy part of town.
Jill bought a nice fine knit jumper and we sauntered back to the hotel late in the afternoon, just as it was starting to get dark. We had a nice seafood dinner across the road at Mures (got there after all).
On Thursday, we went back to Salamanca Place and Jill bought me a nice document box made from Tasmanian Blackwood timber as a late birthday present. Then we drove around around the bay past the shot tower at Taroona, to the town of Woodbridge. We were looking for the little country pub where we had stopped for lunch on a previous trip only to find a new modern cafe; on the same site called Peppermint Bay. We were also disappointed to find that the nearby wood turner’s business at Nichols Rivulet where the Deepings Dolls were made was no longer operating. His product is now only on sale at the shop next door to the one that we had visited at Salamanca Place.
In the end we drove on to the Tahune Forest and to the Air Walk tree top walk. This was very similar to the Otway Fly that I had visited after my recent walk through the Otways. Surprisingly, it is a venture operated by the forestry service, It has a good visitors centre and the cafe; sold a nice lunch with a glass of red wine. The walk was a bit over half a kilometre and through magnificent myrtle and stringybark forest. There were some huon pines scattered through the forest.
We were back to Hobart, by late afternoon and by then the day was cold and getting wet. We caught up with our friends Steve and Ris at Siscos Seafood Restaurant and had a great meal together. Steve is still very busy as a surgeon and Ris has become a prolific writer of romance novels for Mills & Boon. It was raining consistently by the time we had finished our meal and we were grateful for a lift back to the hotel.
