Starting this trip from the Airport motor Lodge in Miramar worked out quite well. A 4.45am check in for a 6.15 flight makes for a crazy middle of the night start from Raumati. We were just a 5 minute walk from hotel room to the terminal.
Getting here all went without a hitch. The flight from Melbourne to Hobart is only 1 hour 15 minutes but the Airport Shuttle took far longer to do the 15km ride from the airport to our hotel. The bus was full and we were the last of about 15 drop offs. Still we got a site seeing tour of Central Hobart but alas no commentary.
Hobart is one of our favourite Australasian cities, small, compact and built around a harbour, like Wellington. It has a relaxed, cool, laid back vibe. Not so much of the in your face, crass, materialistic consumerism of bigger cities with their breathless headlines of sports stars/TV hosts/sex tapes/miracle babies/tragic childhoods/ dream weddings/drug busts etc, etc.
I think Hobart was fortunate to somehow miss the whole 1980/1990s. In Wellington and elsewhere in the 1980s almost every heritage building was demolished and replaced with brutalised concrete and reflective glass. Then in the 1990s the rest were replaced with plywood, polystyrene plaster crap.
Did anything good ever come out of the 80s – music, cinema, fashion, art? Oh wait – our three kids all came from the eighties!
Anyway Hobart has an abundance of wonderful old buildings that are now cherished and highly valued. A legacy of an endless supply of high quality sandstone and a supply of cheap convict labour.
Our hotel is in Battery Point, a heritage area similar to Thorndon or Panell, is 5 minutes walk downhill to the Salamanca Market and the waterfront. It is one of those places advertised as “character’ or “boutique”, a bit older, run down, creaky floors, you take your chances plumbing, never look under the bed, no elevator, people you see in the corridor you don’t want to make eye contact with.
We love them, better then a bland Best Western any day. They are usually in interesting locations, have weird artwork and the colour schemes are done by someone’s mother in law.
The wifi only works in the bar downstairs. This is a trick every hotel should use to maximise profit out of selling drinks.
We had a meal in the bar last night. Quite a few single men hunched on their stools soulful staring into their beer. But there was an interesting mixed group of about a dozen, perched on their stools, all over sixty, having a great time, all chatting, laughing and squealing. They were having a trial to select a team for the Wednesday Quiz Night. One guy had an endless list of trivia questions.
No matter what the question the answer was always the same: “Hey I know that one, it’s what’s his name, as you know, jeez it’s just there, he was in that other thing, oh god it’s right on the tip of my tongue, hang on hang on it’ll come, yeah nah”.
Then some ridiculous guesses, some crude comments, a gulp of beer and a dive into the iPhone. About 10 minutes later someone would come up with the absolute correct answer but by then the show had moved on and nobody cared.
The other interesting thing was their teeth. If they all contributed there may have been enough for one full mouthful of teeth among them. They also had that look people get in their jaws and cheeks when too many teeth are removed and not replaced with implants or dentures. So I guess with shot memories and bad teeth it was too much pot and not enough dentistry – back in the 80s!