My New Love - Tasmania

For some reason, I was super excited to visit Tasmania. I read so much about it and it just looked beautiful in pictures. I had booked Qantas Airline from Adelaide to Hobart.

Feb 16th - Had to get up early to catch my flight, which was at 7:15 am. I was travelling via Melbourne Airport. The flight was comfortable and they offered us a good breakfast. The total flight duration was 5.5 hrs, with a stopover at Melbourne for about 2.5 hrs. I had booked a car for us at Europcar, which I had to pick up at Hobart Airport. The other thing about Australian airports are that, you need to pay $4 for each trolley you need. We thought we could get a GPS while we pick up our car, but unfortunately they didn't have GPS. Now we had no idea how to go to our apartment. We saw a store nearby, where we picked up a GPS for about $100 (Forgot the store name).

I had booked Woolmers Apartment. It was again a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment. I had paid almost Rs. 31,000 for 3 nights. Again here, there was no air-conditioning in either of the rooms!! Really, how do you guys survive?? It was cool outside, but inside it does get stuffy. Luckily, they had table fans that we could use. This apartment was smaller than our previous one at Adelaide. After refreshing, we went out to eat at a nearby cafe. The only advantage of staying at this apartment was the location. It had coles, Woolworths and so many eateries near by. 

We then went out to check out Mt. Wellington. The drive up and the view was just brilliant. There was something magical about the whole place. It was sooooo cold. It was mentioned in the website that it is warmer up here than the city, but it was super cold. We didn't have proper jackets. But that didn't deter us from enjoying the beauty of this place. On our way back, we ate at an Indian restaurant next to our apartment.

Feb 17th - We set out at around 10 am to go to our Bruny Island Cruise. We had to go to the Bruny Island Ferry Terminal. It took us about an hour to reach and our car was the last car to get into the 11:00 am ferry. It was the first time I was seeing that you can actually take your car in the ferry. The ferry can carry about 60 cars. The ferry ride to the island takes about 20 minutes. The only way to travel inside the island, is by your own vehicle. I had booked the 2:00 pm cruise and we had 2 hours to explore the place by ourselves. We first went to this cheese tasting place. The cheeses were amazing, but they said it would not survive through the flight journey to consume it back home. Our next pit stop was at a berry farm, where we had yummy ice creams. The view from that place was brilliant. We were on time for our cruise and they informed us that we were not layered enough and it would be very cold out there. They were sweet enough to give us all jackets to survive the cold. The cruise was just brilliant and everyone must do it. It ended by 4:30 pm and we had to catch the 5:30 pm ferry. We were again the last car to get into the ferry. Thank god for that, otherwise we would have had to wait for 2 hours.

Feb 18th - The next day, again we set out by 10:00 am to explore Freycinet National Park. This was almost 2.5 hrs drive one way from our apartment. The drive was just beautiful. We are considering settling down at this place. You do see so many wallabies on the way. At the national park, we got this $60 pass, which could be used across all national parks of Tasmania. Since we were 4 adults and we wanted to explore 2 national parks, this was a cheaper option. We had packed our lunch and ate before we set out for our hike. There is very little eating option out here, so I was glad we had things to eat. We initially did the Wineglass bay lookout, which took almost an hour to climb. I was so proud of my little one. He did the whole hike by himself. The view was FABULOUS. Completely worth the hike.

I badly wanted to hike and go to the Wineglass Bay beach. Hubby was unsure if we could do it with our little one, but we took the chance. It is a 2.5 hour hike return and the beach was brilliant. I'm so glad that we did and the little one enjoyed it to the core. It was a bit difficult with the little one but he made it super easy and enjoyable for us. I would strongly recommend people to this hike.

By the time we were done, it was almost 6:00 pm. Our car was also running out of petrol. We rushed to find a petrol pump and a place to eat. Everything was shutting down. We saw so many animals while we were driving back. It was a tiring day but absolutely worth it.

My Big Aussie Holiday

I recently came back from a 2 week Aussie trip. I have been planning this trip for almost a year. It all started when hubby said he wanted to go for Australia for 2015 World Cup. We managed to get the tickets for India-SA at Melbourne and India-Pakistan at Adelaide. We were initially to do this trip with friends, but due to various changes, we did it with MIL and neighbour.

Australia is huge and we wanted to do just a 2 week holiday. The number of places to visit at Australia are too many but we had less time. I certainly didn't want to go about visiting all the places, without really exploring it. The main places that I wanted to visit was Adelaide (because of the match), Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Brisbane and Great Barrier Reef. With a toddler, I knew it would be difficult to do the activities at Gold Coast and Great Barrier Reef. 

My travel agent, then told me about Tasmania. After reading about it, I felt I had to visit the place. I then narrowed down my list to Adelaide, Tasmania and Melbourne. Everyone were surprised that I left Sydney and Gold Coast. I just thought this itinerary would do justice to the number of days that I had. I roughly saw the places of interest in each place and I had calculated 3 nights at Adelaide, 5 nights at Tasmania and 5 nights at Melbourne. I then saw a deal on makemytrip for Adelaide hotel and I got an extra night free for the same price. So I was finally doing 4 nights at Adelaide, 5 nights at Tasmania and 5 nights at Melbourne.

Around August, we wanted to start booking our flight ticket. Malaysian Airline had put up a sale, with each ticket costing us Rs. 45,000 return. Now that was super cheap, when compared to Singapore Airline that I was getting at Rs. 65,000 return. By this time, we had decided to leave the little one with my parents. I was not confident about my decision, but I thought it would be better for the little one, considering the amount of travelling to do. And I really didn't book his ticket as well!!! 

Around last week of October, I booked my internal flight from Adelaide to Hobart in Qantas Airline. The ticket was charged Rs. 12,500 per person. Around the same time, I booked my flight from Launceston to Melbourne in Virgin Australia Airline. The ticket was Rs. 4500 per person. After a month passed, my son tells me that he will not stay with my parents and he would also travel with us. I called each airline and booked his ticket as well. Luckily for internal flight, it was almost the same price. But his ticket at Malaysian Airline costed Rs. 62,000 return. Now for a child, that was super expensive!! I was almost paying what I was paying for myself with internal flights!!

The next post will have details of all my bookings and what I did at Adelaide.