Back In Hobart, the journey in Tassie Continues

Ahhh, back in Hobart on Sunday night. We soon discover that this 'city' which is also the capital, is a little bleak. At 6:00 on a Sunday night, the ONLY thing open was Subway, which was closing in a few hours. So, we scaped by on some subway, and went back to our hostel, "backpackers" as they call it here, which is Montgomery's (but goes by Monty's) and had an early night. On Monday (Day 3) we headed three hours north to Freycinet National Park, where we took a hike. The hike went through a high valley between two mountains (but was very much uphill, it was more like a middle mountain than a valley) which led us to a lookout to beautiful Wineglass Bay. After the lookout, we hiked down the other side, to the bay itself, where we waded in the cool water and sat in the warm sand! It was a really nice day out, lucked out on the weather, and although a tough(ish) hike, the 3 hours roundtrip were totally worth it! We saw a few wild wallabies on the trail itself, which let us get close, and then when we got back to the carpark there was a wallaby that was being shy, but when I crouched down and made cute noises, it came to me! I was definitely its favorite human and I was very excited. It licked my hand for a while and then let me pet its head. Wallabies are SO cute! After it wandered around and we gave it some space, its pouch twitched and we realized that there must have been a VERY young little joey in its pouch (one that hadn't yet emerged). Once we discovered that, I was surprised that it had come up to me earlier, most animals are SO protective, but it was probably pretty use to friendly hikers.
Upon returning to Hobart, we had the same problem as the night before finding dinner, which erased our excuse of 'well its sunday night', nope, its Hobart. What a place.
On Tuesday (day 4) we started out with a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. Yummmm! Although established in England, Australia's main supplier of chocolate bars is Cadbury's (whereas in the US its more Nestle and Hershey's). The hot chocolate powder I buy here is Cadbury's, all the candy bars are Cadbury, etc etc. The tour was AMAZING. When I was little, I would always watch Mr. Rogers just in case 'picture picture' was a trip to a factory. I vividly remember watching the day they showed a tour of the Crayola Factory, I thought it was the coolest thing EVER. well, cadbury choc factory, even better! Probably being there in real life helped, but it was so cool. Claire almost passed out because the smell of chocolate got to her but the rest of us really enjoyed it!
After the tour, we had a quick lunch and then rode in vans to the summit of Mt. Wellington, which is the mountain that overlooks the city and bay. The top was SOOO windy, but it had awesome views. Anyway, the whole point of riding up it was so we coudl BIKE DOWN!!! woohoo. We got on bikes and put our helmets on and cruised down the mountain. About halfway down we got off the paved road and went on mountain biking paths....SO steep and so rocky. That was pretty hard/scary but so much fun. We got back on the road at the bottom and rode our bikes through the city and to the bay. The ride was SO fun, Claire and I rode in front of each other and sang songs and had a blast.
When we got to the bottom, we were right next to this Mexican food place (very exciting) that was about to have margarita happy hour...so Sarah, Claire, Erin and I split a big pitcher of strawberry-mango (i think) margaritas...what a day! Chocolate, biking AND margarita's. What a blast.
Well, we've made it to the end of Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday are soon to come, and then I'll make a little post about my second week! Enjoy the pictures!!!