A very long time ago and seemingly a world ago, my favourite person and I had our honeymoon in Tasmania. A few months ago, we decided that as my favourite person hadn’t been back since, we would have a week in Hobart to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

We spent a few days in Melbourne on the way over as there are no direct flights from Adelaide to Hobart, and we had some family matters to attend to. I quite like Melbourne, but my favourite person isn’t so keen on the place. She finds it dreary and dark, however, she finds the shopping to her taste and the food good.

The former was a bonus, as when she opened her case in Melbourne she found she had left her more formal attire at home!

” Well played”, was the comment my daughter made.

It certainly opened up the opportunity for some new purchases in one of Australia’s best shopping locations. A dress from Scanlon and Theodore and another from Jac and Jack fixed the matter.

A bonus of one of the purchases was a complimentary pass to The LUME, a digital art experience around Van Gogh. It was magical. Set to music was a kaleidoscope of moving pictures telling the story of Van Gogh’s art. Just fabulous.

Melbourne’s food scene is also excellent and we had a couple of dinners. I’ll Barco was spectacular, and the Punch Lane Wine Bar was an opportunity to have great food and lovely wine.

Melbourne’s weather is famously changeable, as our experience once again confirmed. Fortunately, we had stopped for a drink on Southbank.

From Melbourne it was off to Hobart.

We left in good time, deciding to pass on going out for breakfast and having a simple breakfast where we were staying to ensure we had plenty of time to get to the airport. We needn’t have bothered. Shortly after we arrived at the airport, we received an announcement that our flight was delayed by an hour, which turned into the best part of two hours.

These things happen, but the annoying part is the lack of updates at the airport. It’s times like this that a friend’s very generous gift of Platinum membership is well received. Airport delays are no fun, but access to a lounge and free Wi-Fi makes the time more easily dealt with.

The delay meant that when we got to Hobart, it was late in the day, and the airport was chaos. Our 10 a.m. departure from Melbourne via the Skybus was bookended by a Skybus trip to our Hobart at 5 p.m. The flight was about 1 hour and 15 minutes, so a lot of time was spent at the airport!

The Skybus dropped us a short walk along the harbour’s edge to our hotel in Salamanca Place. For our honeymoon we’d stayed at the Travelodge, this time it was the more boutique Moss Hotel in Salamanca Place. The Travelodge is still a Hobart fixture and looks a pretty good option. When we booked in late 1979, it was an old style, fly-drive holiday, through a travel agent who would have selected our hotels. I also remember we needed travellers cheques for an interstate holiday. It was before ATMs. How times have changed, although these days there aren’t that many ATMs either.

The harbour front is a combination of working port, bars, and restaurants. I think there is something special about these types of cities. It reminded me of Lisbon in so many ways. It’s a great combination. I cheated and found a video of this area in the 1980s. The wharves were bustling working areas rather than largely tourist-based with bars and restaurants. The hotels were bustling then and still are.

Our accommodation was a hotel room upstairs in an old warehouse above Manky Sally’s. The mind boggles, but it’s a pub!

Our week was designed around our mantra of slow travel.  We scheduled a whole day for a wine tour of the Coal River and then one site a day.

As I’ve posted often, wine has become a passion of mine. There was no significant wine industry in Tasmania in the 1980s, however, Andrew Callard’s fabulous, The Australian Ark, The Story of Australian Wine, tells me in the first of three volumes, that nine vines were planted in Tasmania, Bruny Island, in 1788. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Tasmania seems to have embraced a wine industry through cool climate varieties, particularly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. My first recollection of Tasmanian wine was of sparkling wines, but these days, Pinot Noir is the region’s claim to fame.

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We selected restaurants all in walking distance. Landscape was swish, aptly named for the landscapes that adorned the walls. I’d picked the restaurant as I’d seen they had Cape Grim meat, which we’d taken a liking to in Port Douglas. As well as a suite of fish restaurants, we’d been recommended visiting, Maldini, an old-style Italian restaurant. It was true to label. We visited several local pubs for drinks, and the delightful Mary, Mary for cocktails.

It’s not possible to talk about our week without highlighting the fabulous Toys to Enjoy. It is run by the most delightful 85-year-old lady, who acts like your grandmother as you wander through her fabulous shop. She has a keen eye for just the most fabulous toys: wooden racing cars, a beautiful wooden dolls house, tin cars, and so on. We spent a lot of money there! This is truly a Hobart hidden gem!

Retail isn’t Hobart perhaps Hobart”s strength but an eclectic fashion store, called Becker and Minty, had a few choice pieces, including a delightful coat that my favouperson now has in her wardrobe.

The Salamanca market was literally outside our room, and we spent three solid hours walking around the market. A crayfish slider from Kray Kray and a scallop skewer, their last one for the day, were yum. We also bought some children’s books, a whiskey marmalade jam, and other things we could bring home. In the old video I found of Tasmania, there was a segment in the market. It seems just as big, as then, although I can’t recall if we visited. Looking at the stalls and comparing to today’s, there are so many more food and drink stalls. There’s a whisky stall in every 10th stall, and there are about 300 stalls.

My favourite person delights in telling me that our honeymoon introduced me to old houses. This made revisiting the National Trust’s Runnymede a must. We’d been there 45 years ago, and so it was nostalgic to revisit it. We booked a tour, and our guide used more than the allocated time to show us through. She, along with other members of the tour, provided insights into life in the era. I could help but write in the visitors’ book that it had been 45 years since our last visit.

We also visited the local merchant home of Narrinya at Battery Point. Unlike Runneymede, this was much more of a middle-class home of the period.

For our last full day, I attended the morning service at St David’s Cathedral, after which we visited Battery Point. This has been a long post, so I will separately post about our walk there.

As a final reminiscence of our trip 45 years ago, I couldn’t help but reminisce about our dinner in the revolving restaurant Wrest Point. As I recall it was a bit special. I don’t recall what we ate, but I do remember we washed it down with a bottle of Hardys Old Castle Reisling!