Feb 8-9: Festivus Maximus

aliceesor

Hobart

We had (with minimal adjustment) lined up our stay in Hobart with:
▪︎ Saturday Salamanca Market
▪︎ Sunday Farmers Market
▪︎ Tassie Wine Festival
and
▪︎ Australian Wooden Boat Festival

Especially on top of the festive vibe at our hostel, this was perhaps a bit more fest than we had stamina for, but we attended them all!

On Saturday, we sampled our way through the market –
We ate Korean kimbap…

… sourdough donuts, wallaby burrito, loaded Hawaiian fries, and ice cream.

We met up with Brett and met his wife, Renie, who is equally lovely. 

We wandered the boat festival
oggling boats
and found a men’s choir singing sea shanties, which was awesome.
We opted not to spend any limbs on boat tours,
and squandered our funds at the Wine Festival instead.
There was live music, some of it mobile, some of it on the stage.
Most people were more poshly and less warmly dressed than us, which I’m used to, but my main complaint was that there were SO many options to try, it was impossible to taste them all, or even to taste all of one varietal.
Collectively, we tested 18 wines. And rode home once again via the rose garden.

So, if you’re in a wine shop in Tassie, we liked:
Devil’s Corner – their 2020 Mt Dove syrah pinot blend, and their sparkling wine.
Also, appropriately, we quite liked Aunt Alice’s chardonnay

We were remarkably restrained at the Farmers Market. The croissants were some of the best I’ve ever had. We went back for seconds. I had passionfruit and Nutella. They were so incredibly good. And we found gravenstein apples!
There were also several cheesmakers, and more than 5 veggie vendors –
– all selling impressive daikon!

We bemoaned the many things we could buy at the farmers / craft market that are TOTALLY impractical to carry by bike.

Flis went on a mission to fix the zipper on her shell. I attempted to find an art co-op, but they had closed early.
We decided to accept that we were missing out on the museums and the rest of the boat fest, and went walking up the rivulet trail looking for platypus who apparently live there…

It was a nice quiet walk, without any sign of anything fishier than a duck
but we found Cascade Brewery instead (the oldest in Tassie).

Our chilly platypus lookout picnic left us wanting something warming, so we walked to the only open dessert shop in town, which was back down by the harbour.

Both berry croffles (croissant dough baked like a waffle!) and banaoffee were top notch.

The party vibe downtown made our hostel seem like an old folks home. There were fancily clad young drunk people all over the lawns, so drunk that none of them were watching the epic firework display!

We (and our wallets) are ready to get out of this lovely town and head west tomorrow.

A poorer, but well-fed Alice

2 thoughts on “Feb 8-9: Festivus Maximus”

    1. aliceesor's avatar aliceesor says:

      The Stranded Wailers didn’t introduce themselves in a way I could understand from across the noisy hall, but they did sing Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate and other familiar songs! You’d have like it for sure. 🙂

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