Tasmania Vacation Day 1

So Aram finished grad school in December...yay!! Also he got a job already as well :) So before he was going to start work, we decided to take a "holiday" as it is known here in Australia to Tasmania aka all the locals say "Tassie".

We didn't have a whole lot planned from the start, but knew of things and places we potentially wanted to go.

At the coffee shop in the airport terminal...so true!

It is so crazy when you fly domestic here.  Didn't even have to show our IDs, you don't take off your shoes or belt, and most people don't show up until about 30 minutes before their flight.  We had gotten there much earlier than that...just in case.  I was really surprised that the flight to Tasmania is only 1.5 hours. For some reason we thought it would be much longer.  It was also bizarre that we walked out on the terminal to board our plane.  I haven't done that in ages.

When you arrive in Tasmania, this is the sculpture you see while waiting for your luggage.

Luckily Aram checked our car rental details before we took the flight....he realized that he had booked a manual instead of automatic!!  Yikes that could have been bad.  The downfall because it is Australia, we had to wait about 2 hours for a vehicle.  Not quite the start to our holiday. But finally we got our vehicle.  

It is still so bizarre to get in the left side and not have the steering wheel there. It took both of us to "drive".  We haven't driven since we left the States because the public transportation is good.

We ended up driving from the airport to the grocery store to get some food for breakfast and some beer/wine since the driving is stressful!  We made it to our AirBnB without too many issues except always turning the windshield wipers on instead of the blinker....it's opposite here for certain vehicles!

Then we went into Hobart downtown to explore.  Went and got lunch at a local pub and we were blown away at how good the food and beer was.  Patients had been telling me that the food is amazing there, and they definitely didn't lie on that one!!

First pub

Enjoying that 1st holiday beer :)

 Across the street from this pub was the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, so we decided to go check it out. Photos are from some of the highlights there.

Fun staircase

Tasmania is known for being very progressive now for LGBT rights

Crazy art exhibit

Fighting roos

After exploring here, we went back to our Air BnB and took a bit of a nap.  That 3:15 am wake up call for the airport was catching up with us. After the nap, we decided to go for a walk along the water and ended up in a cool area and had dinner at a place called Belles.  Aram had a burger and fries which was really good and I ordered Spicy Korean BBQ wings and chipotle mac and cheese. I haven't even seen those two items on menus in Sydney regularly, but these were absolutely amazing!! Also had lots of local brewed beer.  So much better!!

Large sculpture called "the giver"

In one days time, we walked more than 16,000 steps.  So much for having a rental car!  Day 2 coming soon!!