Breakfast tinnie time

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After breakfast we headed back to the car hire place to give back the car and phoned a taxi for 9am to pick us up and take us to the Cascade Brewery for our tour (this is the oldest brewery in Australia). After driving around for about 20 minutes looking for a petrol station to fill the car back up we admitted defeat and handed it back half empty (but G managed to sweet talk them into charging us normal and not inflated rates for the petrol so was pretty pleased with himself!).

The brewery is situated in 3 acres of landscape gardens where we sat and caught some rays before putting on our yellow jackets and safety goggles and embarking on our guided tour which lasted about an hour. It was pretty cool to see the thousands of bottles of beer whizzing around on the conveyer belt and great speed. After the tour, we retired back to the gardens to drink our free samples (G commented that I was treating it like a bar and having the one I knew I liked best all the time and not trying them all like him - but why change if you have found one you like as you may end up wasting one!!).

After our samples we caught the public bus and headed back into the centre where we headed down to the harbour and booked a cruise on the river for just after lunch. The cruise was run by the same people who ran the cruise at Port Arthur yesterday so we nipped back to the hotel and picked up the vouchers we had been given on disembarking as they entitled us to a free drink on board.

I managed to get on board first and headed straight up the stairs to the sundeck. G trotted up after me and put on his hat. The cruise had a guided commentary throughout which G loved and the boat seemed to be a suntrap so I had a great time too! We cruised up river out of Hobart (seeing the long expanse of sea in the distance down to Antartica again) to the top of the Derwent River and then back down the other side back to the city.

After the cruise we sat down in the park and had one of the famous in Hobart “sticky fingers” ice creams. G commented that the shop was aptly named after seeing the mess I was in afterwards! I then stayed in the park for 15 minutes before heading off to a traditional Thai massage salon that we had found the night before for a Thai massage - and used my varied vocabulary of swasdee and capkoon ka to great effect.

G used this time to head down for a tour of the old area of Hobart (unfortunately he is at the swimming pool just now so will have to fill you in on this when we get back) - he did give me a brief summary before dinner but I would hate to get any wrong (obviously I listened to him with full attention!).

After my massage, I met G in the hotel bar where we had a drink and then headed up to an Italian restaurant recommended by the concierge. When we got there at about 7.45 we were told the first available table would be after 9 but we decided that this must be a good sign and headed back to Salamanca Square for a drink as we waited. We then headed back up to the restaurant which was still packed and still turning people away and got our table within about 10 minutes. The food was absolutely fab - totally worth the wait!

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and swapped the bottles of wine to hand luggage to minimise excess baggage for our flight to Sydney the next day.

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Photos

On the cruise
(with mount victoria in the background)

Funky statues by the harbour
(G will tell you what they are!!)