Well, I'm finally catching up on the blog posts - almost a month after the event!
Second day in Hobart we hired a car and - as in Burnie - had no real plans about where to go.
First drama - getting out of the city. We decided to start with a trip to an "Apple and Heritage Museum", but we had an amazing amount of trouble getting out of the city in that direction. Many of the streets in the city are one-way, and the map app on my phone didn't know about all of them. And, at one point it told me to do a u-turn on a road that was effectively a free-way! We also ended up driving on a street that I'm pretty sure only allows bus and delivery traffic - oops.
However, we eventually found our way out of town.
The museum was a disappointment - I should have realised it would be once I saw that it was a 'site of interest' in the documents Princess prepares about their shore excursions. The description was the classic "come here on a shore excursion to spend money on food and souvenirs but don't really expect too much else", and it unfortunately lived up to that standard. However, we found a cafe in town and had a nice coffee while considering our next move
We had considered going to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary and also to some wineries but in the end we decided against this. Instead, we decided to go up Mt Wellington. Unfortunately there was so much twisting and turning on the road that I managed to get carsick. But, when we got to the top, it was absolutely worth it - spectacular views in all directions.
This is the view of Hobart from Mt Wellington - the little white blob in the water is our cruise ship.
This is Paul on top of Mt Wellington
Fortunately, getting back into Hobart was nowhere near as dramatic as leaving. We managed to find a servo to stop up the petrol (therefore avoiding having to pay the outrageous prices Avis charge to top up) and had no one-way street trouble either.
Disappointing afternoon back on the ship though - for some reason they were doing work outside our cabin. Now, I understand that they are always needing to do minor maintenance, and I understand that sometimes this might involve multiple people bashing heavy hammers directly onto the metal hull just outside your cabin. What I'm not happy about is the fact that we weren't warned - usually when there's going to be noise they let you know, but not this time.
Paul astoundingly managed to nap through a couple of hours of this (with a pillow over his ears!) but I couldn't.
