[valo403]

I spent a weekend in Tasmania and it is awesome. I only did Hobart and the area around it, but I heard great things about the rest of the island as well. A few of the highlights I recall:

- Port Arthur: A pretty crazy place for a few reasons. It's an old convict settlement on a harbor and is both gorgeous and very interesting historically. Unfortunately it's also the sight of the largest mass murder in post-colonial Australian history, 35 people were killed, and 23 wounded, while visiting the site in 1996. There's a memorial setup at the site of the cafe where it occurred. It's a pretty powerful place to visit.

- Cascade Brewery: In Hobart, old school brewery tour with a pretty solid amount of tasting in a really picturesque estate style brewery. The gardens and surrounding grounds were nice to stroll through on a sunny afternoon.

- We went with a small local tour company to head out to Port Arthur which took us to a number of great sights around the region, there are some amazing ocean lookouts and some beautiful inland areas, if you're into the outdoors it's a great place to spend a couple of days exploring.

- Did a couple of boat tours from Hobart, they were nice and gave you a great view of the city and up the river but weren't mind blowing.

- The city itself was nice, pretty slow paced but full of pretty solid bar and restaurant options.

- One thing to be aware of its that it's not exactly warm down there, even in the middle of the summer it can get quite cold, particularly near the shore. After all, the next piece of land is Antarctica.

- Also, the airport is great. They just throw the bags on a cart behind a tractor and pull them into the terminal/shed.