I would say there is no magic like travel!
We are now on the island of Tasmania. The day started out rough--initially one person getting 42 suitcases off of eight hotel floors in one slow elevator. Folks pitched in to help, and somehow we made our flight from Melbourne to Hobart with time to spare.
I hope Virgin Airlines sends me a "how did you like your flight?" survey. My "how likely are you to recommend?" vote would be zero. Never. We had to walk on the tarmac and climb stairs to the plane. They could not have crammed one more seat into it. They charged for everything but water; $4 for a soft drink. When we landed, there were exclamations all over the plane. We hit the runway so hard that I'm amazed the landing gear held up. Nevertheless, here we are.
Our bus driver, Leesa, first ever woman driver on any of our tours, kicked major ass and got all our luggage loaded on the bus, then gave us a fabulous tour of Hobart. Lanie and I had to rearrange the twin beds in our room to get access to outlets. We are in the oldest hotel in town. It is beautiful, but again, there's one tiny elevator. We settled in quickly and you guessed it, headed to a pub. The local beer is Cascade, which we enjoyed a pint of at the Hope and Anchor, oldest pub in town, supposedly haunted. We had no ghost citing. Lanie and I stopped in and roamed through a beautiful church just up the street from our hotel.
We went back to the hotel for a walking tour of town. It took us through a lovely park that used to be a cemetery and down to the wharf. Many of the old buildings were built by convicts who were shipped here from Britain. The sandstone has the carvings of the convicts to mark the amount of work they did (photo below). Our guide took us into a pub to show us the men's bathroom where the urinal trough faces a one-way mirror. Have I mentioned that our guide is quite the character? (Someday I will relay his "condoms for koalas" story.)
We returned to the hotel and had a buffet dinner in the beautiful atrium. We had less than six hours of sleep last night, so tonight is "early to bed."
"Drunk" and "Disorderly" are having fun!
Leta
 |
| Sandstone cut and laid by convicts |
 |
| Our atrium for dining |
No comments:
Post a Comment