Tasmania: Part I

First off, I just wanted to say thanks so much to those of you guys who have written me long emails about your lives…it just TOTALLY makes my day when I get back from a trip to emails in my inbox from you all. I just sit at my computer laughing my head off or talking back to the screen. (Because I am cool like that.)

So, the past four days I had a wonderful and relaxing experience in Tasmania! For those of you who don’t know where it is, Tasmania is just the little heart shaped island to the south of Australia. It’s about at the same latitude as NZ, and part of it might be even further south, so it’s about the same climate. (aka COLD. Brr.) On Thursday, I ended up skipping my afternoon class because I was able to get a much cheaper flight there in the afternoon. (oops. Yes, I am much more of a slacker here, I know.) Anyway, that meant that I got about six hours to myself in Launceston before Dana and Jess arrived at about 10:30 pm. I was so excited! The airport was so tiny that there was no baggage claim: they just like dumped your bags in a little concrete area…really funny. It was raining and cold when I got there, which was a bummer, but by the time I got to my hostel and was ready to start exploring, the sun came out, which was great. Armed only with a map, I decided to head out! There were just two main things I was really interested in: one was a very fancy restaurant serving modern Australian cuisine called Fee & Me that I made a reservation at, and the other was this Roman bathhouse. First, though, I pretty much just walked through the whole city looking around at shops and such. There really is nothing more exciting than just exploring a city in a foreign place totally by yourself, even if the city is absolutely tiny and pretty much everything shuts at 4:30 pm…haha. Also, my camera lens BROKE, which made me really sad because I wanted to take pictures. But hey, my new “no worries” lifestyle has taken over and since there was nothing I could do about it I didn’t really freak out. After I looked around for a couple hours, I realized basically everything was totally closed so I randomly found this bath house, and it turned out to actually be OPEN.

I have never been to a bathhouse before, but about 10 minutes after I walked in (I had cleverly brought my bathing suit in my purse because I am now a traveler prepared for ANYTHING), I found myself in one of the three hot tubs, utterly relaxed. I think I was also like the only person there under 50, but that’s OKAY. There was a pool, a little place to wash your feet before you entered it, a hot tub, a warm tub, a cool shower, a sauna, a steam room, and several other rooms with hot lights and random marble benches to lie on. I was lying in one of the chairs with my eyes closed just thinking about how a week ago, I had been on a GLACIER, and now, I was in a random Roman style bathhouse in Tasmania. I will be the first to say that I can’t even believe how awesome my life is right now. Anyway, sadly I had to leave after an hour to hurry back to the hostel and change for my fancy dinner! Disclaimer: if you are not interested in food, skip the next few paragraphs, because that is ALL I am about to talk about.

So, Fee & Me was started by this chef named Fiona and it has actually won the best restaurant in Australia, and best restaurant in Tasmania like seven years in a row or something. I have wanted to try a “modern Australian cuisine” meal since I’ve gotten here, so this was my chance! I have never eaten a full meal out at a restaurant totally by myself, and it was such an exhilarating experience. At a restaurant like that, the waiters just take such good care of you and love talking about the food…it’s just unbelievably classy. I also had the incredible good fortune of being there on a night where there were some VERY cool people in the intimate dining room. (It was kind of just like a little cottage.) My waiter informed me shortly after I’d gotten my first course that the sophisticated sounding table of four gourmands whose conversation I’d been listening to were actually filming a “Discover Tasmania” TV program and one of the men was actually on this cooking segment of Better Homes and Gardens Australia. And at another table, the executive chef of the restaurant and his girlfriend were eating and trying out some new dishes that Fiona herself was in the kitchen preparing. For a wannabe foodie like me, this was pure HEAVEN.

The meal was in entree style (remember, here, entrees are appetizer sized), and I got four courses, including dessert. I ate:
- Chicken and shitake dumplings with Asian style cabbage in sweet chili sauce
- Lamb medallions with green beans and swede puree (this sweet potato puree that had little crispy sweet potato crisps on top - SO GOOD), and there were little wild rice grains scattered around the plate: it was a beautiful dish!
- Hare pie with a parmesan chive souffle topping served over a celeriac carrot puree (this is apparently Fiona’s signature dish so I had to get it!)
- Dessert: a citrus theme, that had kafir lime panna cotta, lemon brulee, orange sponge cake, and blood orange sorbet

This was seriously a heavenly meal. One of the best I’ve ever had, I think. It was made all the more delightful by the fact that I could hear like absolutely everything the amazing table of gourmands were saying, so I learned all these interesting facts about wine pairings with food and felt really special when I saw they got some of the same dishes as me…eventually the TV guy even came over and introduced himself and gave me all these recommendations for the best places to go in Sydney for food and wine, and that was just really exciting. AND, he was a pastry chef for 12 years so he was telling me all about that. Basically, this evening solidified my INTENSE desire to become a chef and pastry chef and restaurant owner and bakery owner all combined. Wow. I don’t think I have ever had so much fun by myself!

Friday morning, our three day East Coast Explorer tour began. We drove down one highway and passed all these tiny towns, and eventually stopped in this slightly larger seaside town called St. Helens for lunch. This was a different tour company than the NZ company, and I have to say I liked Connections better. But I think it would be pretty much impossible to have a better tour than my Connections tour of NZ. It was almost hard to travel in Tasmania after NZ because the South Island was so utterly spectacular, and Tasmania was kind of like it but on a smaller scale. I had to force myself to stop comparing the two and then it was more enjoyable and definitely more relaxing. I think if I’d gone to Tasmania before NZ I would have been even more impressed. As it was, it was still great; I just felt like NZ kind of overshadowed it a little and I definitely would live in NZ over Tasmania if I had to choose between the two. Anyway, our tour guide, Matt, was super nice and really friendly. And our tour group, which had 17 people, came from TEN countries! It was really funny because he called us by our countries, like Team America, Team Italy, Team Brazil, etc. The dynamic on this group was completely different - we were the youngest again and many of the people were couples (one was even on their honeymoon!) and considerably older. It’s really interesting seeing all the kinds of people who go on these tours - and that even when about half the people can’t speak English very well, we can still sit around a table playing card games and having a good time.

That afternoon, we visited the gorgeous Bay of Fires, which is this long stretch of beach where we played on all these huge rocks. I definitely would love to come back to Tassie when it is warmer because it would be so much fun to actually be able to go INTO the water instead of stare at it longingly. After that, we visited Nature World, this wildlife park. Now I know I said I was tired of wildlife parks after my second time, but this was probably the best one I’ve been to! And that is because we came right at feeding time AND they had TASMANIAN DEVILS. Tasmanian devils are seriously the cutest animals ever that become SUPER scary when they eat food. They are scavengers so they eat absolutely everything and their teeth are so powerful that they could easily crunch through human bones. But most of the time they just look like absolutely adorable little puppies. (totally not like the Looney Tunes depiction or anything.) I definitely could have watched them for hours. And we also got to feed and pet kangaroos so that was fun per usual. (I can’t believe I just said it was typical for me to pet kangaroos. Wow.) Plus, by this time, I had somehow figured out how to get my camera lens to work so I was able to take pictures!

We spent Friday evening in Bicheno, a tiny seaside town with a population of about 200. It consisted of some houses, one store, one motel, one liquor shop, and one chemist. (chemists are drugstores here, by the way). It was fun; both nights we got to stay in these Adventure Tours houses - Dana and Jess and I all got to share one room each night, and each house had a kitchen, dining room, and lounge area. It was really relaxing and homey. This house had an incredible view of the sea, too! Before dinner, as darkness was setting in, we went on a PENGUIN tour. We went down to the beach and got to see 100+ penguins marching up from the ocean to their little burrows on the beach and surrounding areas. Apparently they are very punctual and walk up from the ocean at pretty much the exact same time every night. They were SO adorable and it was so cool to see them just a meter or so away from us! However, by the end of the tour we were reallllllly cold because Tasmania is just kind of ridiculously cold due to its super southern latitude. (It was worse because the few days that I actually was in Sydney there was this huge heat wave and it was amazingly hot!) Anyway, then we went back to the house and Matt had made dinner for us, and we had a really chill night eating, cleaning up after dinner, and playing random board games. Yeah, Tasmania doesn’t exactly have a nightlife.

Okay, this is getting super long so I will do the other half of the tour tomorrow!

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Videos from "Tasmania: Part I":

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