Hey everyone,
Sorry my bloggings are a little delayed from the beginning but now that I've settled in more I lose track of my updates. Anyways Tasmania is amazing what a fantastic and laid back place. It is very green with beautiful beaches, waterfalls and mountain trails to no end. I would highly recommend that you make a trip to Tazzy if you ever happen to have the opportunity. Not only are the people really laid back, entertaining to hang out with but the whole atmosphere around Tasmania is just great. Its definitely a hidden gem amongst locations in Australia and I am glad that I experienced it.
I made the trip to Tasmania with my buddy Gaurav and his roommate PK. We took a cruise liner "The Spirit of Tasmania" which was my substitute for the Carnival Valor this year and then rented a car to traverse the mighty island. Our first stop landed us at a Rasberry farm for breakfast. Turns out they had a full menu with everything from breakfast to desserts all with jams, jellies, fillings of raspberries which were insanely good. So that was a great start to the trip.
(above is the Sideling Lookout on the hills on our way to Swansea)
So after setting off from breakfast we planned to drive for the day to a town called Swansea where we were going to stay for the night and go to Wineglass Bay the following morning. The trip from the boat took us basically along one small highway winding and twisting and turning for some 500k. We drove through Launceston due east to St. Helens (a popular surfing and fishing town). Along the way we found a few things on our maps and on road signs to stop off and check out. We came across some prety sweet stuff that we weren't expecting from a row of carved trees (seen below) and a very nice waterfall (Ralph Falls also below) over looking a valley. This was the great thing about our trip we basically had a few set things to do but then allowed most of the trip to be random excursions and basically taking chances when we saw things that took our fancy.
Ralph Falls...
Also, on our trip to Swansea we stopped at a winery tried some Tasmanian wine which was good. Which then led into Swansea. At our hostel we met some of the locals and went out to the only bar in town met more locals and drank the bar closed and stumbled over to the hostel for a little night cap. The bar also doubled as a liquor store, restaurant, bakery and I think the visitor's center go figure.
So a little background on Swansea is that in the summer it explodes with activity and basically triples in size for surfing, fishing and vacationers but in the winter has about 500 ppl living there so drinking and tomfoolery at the one bar in town on this random Friday in winter was about all there was going on and pretty entertaining. The locals in Swansea I would compare to likes of Joe Dirt just to give you an idea of how interesting the night was.
So following our night in Swansea included a drive to Wineglass Bay, seen above, which is one of the top ten beaches in the world. It is a beautiful place but DO NOT drink yourself silly the night before and think that the walk to where that picture is taken is going to be easy or fun or even the slightest bit interesting. You will quickly find out that it is steep, you will get the spins and you will have to take several breaks, but I digress.
There are several other bays, light houses, and trails in the park around Wineglass Bay and I really wish I could have been there in the summer because locals said that it is amazing.
So this took us through our full day Saturday between walking trails and driving to Hobart. Once we reached the capital we settled into a grungy little hostel that I suppose we didn't do our research on but got the job done as far as providing us with a place to sleep and stationing us near pubs and attractions that we had intended to see on Sunday.
Sunday brought us to the Cascade Brewery. Australia's oldest brewery at that if you want any other bits of useless knowledge feel free to ask. They had a nice hour long tour which was a nice walk through the brewing process and through the bottling room followed by a tasting which allowed you to try any of the beers they had on tap. If you ever come across Cascade beer I recommend the Cascade Pale Ale or the Cascade Blonde (not a low carb as you might assume but actually probably one of the best the offer).
TBC....
