The highlights?
- arriving in Melbourne to find that the reception for the "apartment hotel" was on floor 8 and the lifts were u/s. So I trudged up to 8, got the key to the room (which was on 9), wedged open the stairwell door, went back down and collected Mrs VVB and the heavy bags and went up to 9. Slowly. There was an elderly French couple waiting in the lobby and even after two treks to the room and time to get settled, the poor dears were still waiting for the "in 30 minutes" repair when we went back down. At least I got to exercise my minimal, vestigal French. They got the lifts working but they soon went out again for a few hours.
- the fabulous National Gallery, and how much the inhabitants of chateau VVB prefer traditional forms of art;
- the museum isn't where it used to be 40 years ago;
- buying food (to cook) on Easter Sunday can be a challenge in Melbourne CBD;
- the Spirit of Tasmania is quite good fun even if you don't sleep like you expected to;
- Tasmania is breathtakingly beautiful - every turn you make unveils a new vista (hence the number of photos);
- especially Port Arthur and the Huon Valley;
- but we don't think we'll go to live there, altho' we did discuss it a bit and spent an afternoon looking around to get a feel for the suburbs (we've had a real estate feed coming in for about a year);
- it takes about a week until you stop thinking about work during the ritual 2am awake period;
- the proprietors of both the owner-operated places we stayed at were ex-Queenslanders (including a couple from the next suburb who also patronise the shop where offspring no 2 works - yup, it's a small world);
- you don't really miss the internet and newspapers and all that hoo-ha;
- and you don't want to come home.
But here we are. Selected photos later.
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