The plan for today was to check out early and head back to Hobart to try and get to the Penitentiary – again.

Rather than attempting to park the car in the city, I decided it would be best to drive over to the Shoreline Hotel where we will be staying for the evening and get the bus from there .

It is only around 40 minutes or so from Franklin to Shoreline, so I knew we had plenty of time to catch a 9:15 bus to get us into the city in plenty of time for the penitentiary tour at 10 o’clock.

I am happy to say that that plan worked perfectly!!

The day started a little overcast, and we did get a little spit of rain on the Kingston side of the mountains, but once we cross the range and came back into the Hobart side, the rain stopped, and the weather started clearing.

We parked the car at the front of the hotel, which is a few steps away from the bus stop.

I could see on the penitentiary website that there were available spots for the 10 o’clock tour so I was fairly confident that it was going to be open, but I was still hesitant to book it online.

At 9:30 the doors opened and yes, they were open. Yay.  We paid our admission fee for the 10 o’clock tour, and were told we were free to look around the artifacts and rooms while we waited.

At 10 o’clock our guide, Matthew gathered us together and began the tour.

The building that we toured was actually the old chapel with most of the penitentiary being destroyed in the 1960s the only reason this building was saved was the fact that it, at that time ,housed both the Magistrates and Supreme Courts of Tasmania.

The tour itself is around 90 minutes and very informative. We would both highly recommend it any time you may be in Hobart.

I found this YouTube video of the tour.

By the time we had finished at the penitentiary, it was getting towards lunchtime.  We thought we would walk down Campbell Street to Constitution dock and make a decision on what we were going to eat.  As we came closer to the waterfront, we decided we would have lunch at the Grand Chancellor Hotel.

I looked up their website as I did not think the restaurant was open for lunch and indeed it was not. However, the Atrium Bar was open for lunch and the menu looked suitable.

We had a lovely lunch of a burger and a pasta dish and a glass of wine each before catching the bus back to Shoreline.

By this time it was just before 2 o’clock, but our room was not quite ready so we waited in the lounge bar until 2:30 when we could check in.

We unloaded our bags into the room and then drove the car to the service station on the other side of the car. Park to fill up with fuel ready for the morning and get some milk for tea and coffee.

We ordered a pizza from the hotel café, delivered to our room and had a quiet night watching TV ready for a very early 4 o’clock wake up alarm in readiness for our 6:20 flight.