Travelling MoyJos

We managed to have a reasonable sleep in this morning thanks to good block out curtains

For breakfast this morning, we thought we’d try the buffet breakfast in the restaurant downstairs and it was really good 😀

After breakfast, we went for a walk up to the main City centre to have a look around at some shops. Mainly because stupid me forgot to order milk on the Woolworths order.😏

Woolworths and the Elizabeth Street mall are only a very short five minute walk away from where we are staying .

After bringing our milk back to the apartment, we decided to have a walk along with the waterfront and get some fish and chips for lunch.

I also wanted to see what other accommodation options are available with water views .

The Grand Chancellor  is directly in front of us, but I know it is very difficult to get accommodation there at this time of year because the Sydney to Hobart yachties are based there.

Looking around, though there are actually not a lot of choices certainly not apartment choices .  One hotel we saw has lovely apartments looking out over the water, but they start at around $600 a night just a little bit rich for us.😀

We had a lovely walk around the waterfront.

The building crews are just now setting up ready for the yachts to arrive on the 27th.

There are lovely sculptures on the waterfront of seals, penguins, and the men who worked at the Antarctica base with their dogs.

We had a lovely lunch at Mure’s seafood.  We chose to share a seafood basket as we had had our big buffet breakfast.

We had a quiet afternoon and had the roast special at the restaurant for dinner.

A bit of TV before bed and we’re ready for the next day😀😀

Our flight today from Maroochydore to Hobart was due to depart at 10:35.

I had booked a taxi to collect us from home at 8 o’clock.

We decided on a taxi because, with Mick’s half price fares,  it is only around $50 to the airport.  When I looked at parking the car for the 16 days it was going to cost me just under $500 so a cab seemed the prudent way to go.

Around 7 o’clock we were just sitting around watching TV doing nothing so I said to Mick did he want me to call the Cab now as we may as well be sitting at the airport as sitting at home.

We got to the airport, checked in in plenty of time and just waited for our flight .

Our flight from Maroochydore to Melbourne was it smooth and uneventful.

We arrived into Melbourne on gate two and our boarding pass to Hobart said we needed to be at gate four so it wasn’t far to go at all. We had a 90 minute wait between flights and at one point, I decided that I needed to go to the restroom, and it was when I arrived back at the gate that I realised that the board did not say the next plane was going to Hobart 😱

Minor panic as we looked for a gate that had some Virgin staff to double check our tickets.

Sure enough our flight had been moved to gate 10 luckily we had plenty of time and we made our way to gate 10 ready for our next flight .

The flight from Melbourne to Hobart is only around an hour, and it is always quite rushed. The poor cabin crew barely have enough time to do all their work before we land.

It took a while to collect our bags and we made our way to the Sky Bus collection point. There was a bus waiting, but apparently, we had just missed one bus, and this bus was not leaving for another 15 minutes.

The lady bus driver asked what hotel we were staying at and she suggested we get off at one which is the grand chancellor and walk a very short distance to our hotel rather than waiting on the bus to go right around its route and get off at our stop, which is the last stop.

She was correct and it was a very short walk just around the corner and we checked in at about 6:20pm.

I mentioned to the reception staff that I had ordered some groceries and they should have been delivered (I had a notification on my phone that came through when we were in Melbourne saying that they had been delivered)

We were told yes, indeed our groceries had arrived and had been put into our room, including putting the cold goods into the fridge. Great service.

We made our way upstairs to our one bedroom apartment where we will be staying for the next week.  The apartment is lovely, quite large with a full kitchen lovely big bathroom and the laundry in the bathroom .

We unpacked our bags made a cup of tea and then later made our way downstairs to the restaurant for dinner.

After dinner, it was back up to our room for a little bit of TV and an early night. It had been a big day.

Plans for this year’s Christmas break began way back in April when I thought I had best book flights if we wanted to go to Hobart at the end of the year.
Last year I left it until October and found that there were no flight  available.  We did end up going to Tasmania but had to fly into Launceston

This year we have decided to have a week in Hobart city, then a few days north at Bicheno  and a few days south in the Huon Valley.
We do not have many plans at all, with the only attraction we have booked being a day cruise around Maria Island.

Given that we know Hobart city well enough, we decided that we will not hire a car for the first week.  Hobart airport has the Skybus to the city, so I simply looked at where the bus stopped and chose accommodation from that list.  We will then get the Skybus back to the airport and collect a hire car from there and head north.

Our Maria Island cruise leaves from the town of Tribunna, about 100km’s south of Bicheno. The plan is to leave Bicheno early, have the day on the cruise and stay at the Triabunna Cravan Park for the night before heading south to the Huon Valley.  On our last night, we have chosen to stay at the Shoreline Hotel to be closer to the airport as we have an early morning flight.  Much better than needing leave the Huon Valley SUPER early to get to the airport.