10/19 & 10/20 - Leaving Coles Bay, MONA, and Further Explorations around Hobart

 10/19/2012 -  We headed back to Hobart for our final days in Tasmania... we are leaving Michael & Nola's wonderful home and are still amazed at how beautiful it is and how wonderful the views are!  We cannot say "Thanks!" to them enough!

We stopped at MONA just off the highway north of Hobart.  MONA is the Museum Of New and old Art.  People said MONA is a Love/Hate relationship and we agree.

There were some interesting pieces and a lot of 'weird' - I guess I'm not as 'artsy fartsy' as I thought. Will mention art again when we stop in Auckland for one day on the way home.

We started at the lowest level and began working our way up.  There was a 'waterfall' that streamed down in words - AMAZING!!!  No photo - dumb me.

These are insect carapaces - teeny to rather large.

This is a skull (bug carapaces) and a stuffed bird.

 These two works were really good!  There were a couple more cool items, and one rather stinky one.

We kind of pooped out as we kept seeing less and less that we liked.

Entrance from the ferry.

 It was a fascinating place.


10/20/2012 - If you are in Hobart on a Saturday, it is almost mandatory that you visit Salamanca Markets.  They were great, like Eumundi!

We picked up a few things, snacked a bit (of course), and checked with the honey market whether we could take Leatherwood Honey through New Zealand.  Leatherwood honey is a strong flavored honey - this link says it better than I.

Built by the Wooden Boat Center - raffled off today.

Unfortunately, honey is one thing New Zealand will not allow into their country and will take away and destroy so we didn't buy any.

We praised  the gent for telling us instead of taking advantage.

Wood, wood...

... and More wood.

We couldn't take too many photos or the artists get cranky.  So we wandered off to explore the area near the markets.

Park Entrance... to the hill.

Old Hotel

House in Arthur Circus

Old street going down to the Market

Music at the Market... Bluesy group and good!

Another park entrance

They have lovely parks.

It started spitting rain as we walked back to the car.



Brian and Lyn suggested a short drive down the coast from Blackman's bay.  We stopped at a park that had been used by the military to protect the harbor.

 The park had great views... of course.

This drive was close to the water so we got a slightly different view of one of the fish farms.

The road became unpaved and went between to cow pastures... and this light colored Tiger Snake was making his way from one pasture to the other.  He's (or she's) a big one!

Of course we got another cool road sign.  This warns drivers to watch out for the Eastern Quoll - an insect eating nocturnal creature.





We got to this point and knew we had gone too far so we turned around and headed back to the house.

Nice reflection, even though the...

Tide's Out

Nice day - again!