October 22 - Trip to Tasmania

We took an early flight to Hobart. I will applaud Qantas for their service. The flight was approximately 42 minutes and we got breakfast! That's right, breakfast. Cereal, fruit, and a drink. On a 42 minute flight. We had to eat fast. Lilly also got a kids pack to play with. I dig Qantas!

Once we arrived in Hobart, we were able to get our rental car quickly (it's a small airport) and drove into the city. We parked the car and took off on a walk in search for information. Seth's highlight may have been watching the passed out drunk guy sleeping on a park bench. He woke up and started chugging a beer he pulled out of his jacket. Sorry, we didn't get a picture of it.

Once we found the information center, Seth and his parents chose what we would be doing for the next couple of days. As for the current day, it was between the Cadbury Chocolate Factory and the Cascade Brewery. The brewery won, mostly because you can't actually tour the chocolate factory, just the visitor's center.

We went over to the brewery and had lunch before our tour. Lilly wasn't allowed to go on the tour so Pennie stayed with her. They walked around the gardens for the hour that we were on the tour. The day after our visit was some Tasmanian holiday so everything was going to be shut down for the day. For this reason, there wasn't really anything going on and all the huge vats were completely empty.

After the tour we were able to try a few samples. I think we got three each. The brewery had done the math to figure out how much an average person could drink and still be under the legal limit to drive home. The little glass show here, was not the usual size. They had to account for the stout being stronger than the other beer!

After the tasting was over, we jumped back into our car and headed to our place of residence for the next several nights. We had found a two story, 3 bedroom apartment type place. It was pretty nice but in the end, we really didn't spend a lot of time there.

For dinner we went to the hotel restaurant. Seth and I took off before dinner to find a grocery store to load up on snacks and breakfast foods. By the time we got home, Lilly was in bed (although awake) and we pretty much crashed as well.