7am start as usual this morning. I depressingly calculated that my next proper sleep in would be…in August. Sigh.
Up in time to have a quick breakfast, coffee and to see Sienna and Anita off to school! And then off to the nursing home to see Nanna and Poppa – with a quick stop off at the post office (all of Franziska’s postcards cost $45 to spend!!) and the supermarket to pick up some flowers for Nanna’s room.
Not too much to say about this visit. We looked at some photos, heard that my cousin just proposed to his girlfriend in Spain (!) and mused at the snow on top of the mountain in the distance.
Before too long it was out on to the road again, heading towards Richmond. There isn’t exactly much to see there but it was on the way so I thought we’d have a look. We drove to the Richmond Bridge – the oldest bridge still being used in Australia – but it felt entirely silly trying to tell Franziska that something built in the 1800s was ‘old’.
We took an obligatory photo of the bridge and headed off to check out the little model village they have in Richmond – cute, small, but $14 to get in?? Oh well, it was something to see.
Whilst there I managed to break our car – or rather, I walked past the front of the car and somehow managed to bend the number plate in half? Not sure how that happened. There was some hasty pushing the plate back in to place. There, like new! (almost).
And then I discovered Franziska had never had scones before. That needed to be fixed so we headed off to a tea room to drink English Breakfast tea and eat scones, cream and jam. The scones were perfect and fluffy and warm and yummy and Franzi was very impressed. The shop owner was a bit odd and not quite all there – he made me a calligraphy bookmark… for Jessicka. Hmmm.
Around midday we began our hour and a bit trip down to Port Arthur. I actually really enjoyed this part, driving through the Tassie countryside in our mini automatic car listening to the radio and just taking in the view. Even if I couldn’t figure out the speed limit and was going 60 in a 100 km zone for quite a while!
Eventually we got to Port Arthur without the GPS (phone signal/internet had completely gone by now) and found our Comfort Inn – ah, such a old lady hotel. Old lady bed covers, old lady smell… and certainly no internet. Ah well, it’ll be comfy for one night.
Back to buy our entry tickets and off to see the buildings. Again, it was a very odd feeling trying to present our past two hundred years as ‘history’ – its really not that long in European terms at all. I think the most interesting part about our history for Franzi was that there isn’t very much of it! She kept taking photos ‘for her Dad’ and I’m not really sure what she thought of it all overall.
The weather held out, it was very chilly, but not unpleasant strolling around the grounds – all very quiet, of course, in the middle of winter. We took a nice little harbour cruise for 20 minutes and spent quite a bit of time in the Separate Prison (a solitary silent prison that was easily the most interesting thing there). A good three hour effort in the end.
At around 5pm we settled in for dinner next to the heater in Felons restaurant – where seafood is a speciality. Hmmm, Chicken Parmys for both of us, followed by a stupidly delicious chocolate pudding with berries and ice cream. Nom.
At 6.30pm time for the ghost tour! I’m really glad we did this, it really is a good one – our tour guide was a young woman which some sort of speech impediment. At the start of the tour I would have been quite interested to see a ghost – at the end, after all of the stories, I think I would have passed out. Just a little spooky. Franziska enjoyed it very much too.
Finally back to our not so warm hotel at just after 8pm – a wonderfully reasonable time… even in time to watch the end of Masterchef! The room took a long time to heat up but we soon discovered the electric blankets – an ironically new experience for Franzi.
Ah, the relaxing evening snuggled in bed watching television was much enjoyed.
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