Today we head to Launceston for a night away. We had not planned to do this when I originally booked this trip, but the Tasmanian Government were kindly giving away tourism dollars for Qld, SA and WA residents to the tune of $300, so I thought why not 🙂
The travel vouchers were for $200 to be used for accommodation and $100 to be used for activities.
As it has been quite a while since we have been “up north” I thought I would find somewhere to stay in or around Launceston. After some digging through the booking website to find places that would accept just one night, I found the Country Club Villas and booked a room. As the rate for these rooms is $209, using the voucher I paid just $9 for a lovely apartment suite.
With the $100 activity voucher, I found a 50 minute Cataract Gorge cruise.
So with our almost free tickets booked we were ready to go. Then as an added bonus, we were gifted 2 $50 meal vouchers for Christmas, one of which can be used at the Country Club’s restaurants.
We packed an overnight bag and left everything else at the room at the Shoreline Hotel and hit the road around 7:00am
Travelling North-East through the Coal Valley we made it to Ross for morning tea. We saw a sign that said Bakery and Scallop Pies and could not resist. We did not have a scallop pie on this occasion but did enjoy a very nice pot of tea and a sausage roll for me and a plain meat pie for him.
We tried to go to the park where we had been in 2009-10 (there was an altercation with a Cape Baron Goose), but the caravan park has expanded and you can no longer see the Ross Bridge from that side.
Driving back through town to the south side of the bridge, I took the obligatory phots 🙂
On toward Launceston and we saw a sign, we made a detour and can now say that we might not be allowed to travel to WA, but we have been to Perth…in Tasmania 🙂
Back on the road and we were reminded that the main north-south highway is known also known as the “Heritage Highway” as it follows roughly the same route as the original convict built road from the 1800’s. Learn more here
As we have seen many of these towns before, we did not stop choosing to keep going directly to Launceston.
We arrived at the Country Club Villas around lunchtime and were lucky that our room was ready, so we completed check-in and offloaded our bags.
We were very pleasantly surprised with the villa, it certainly had the largest bathroom I have ever seen in a hotel room and (a first for me) a TV in the bathroom!!
After we unpacked, we set off to see where we had to go for our Cataract Gorge cruise in the morning, then had a drive around Launceston.
We found a Woolworths and bought some milk and afternoon tea (and some extras for the trip back tomorrow 🙂 )
Back at the Country Club, we had a lovely soak in the huge spa bath. As I knew this was a spa unit, I had brought Epsom salts and we soaked for a good 40minutes watching TV 🙂
Nicely relaxed, it was then time to walk over to the onsite Bar and Grill for dinner. A meal of Eye Fillet Steak with vegetables for me and Lamb Ragu for him was followed by Blueberry Cheesecake.
Suitably stuffed with food and relaxed from the spa, saw us turning in and sleeping soundly for the next 8 hours.
