Friday
And farewell to old Hobart Town, with a tear in our eyes and a lot of really good memories.
We arose fairly early and had breakfast with Rob and Toni before they went off to lead another walk. The master packer had almost finished but those last few things which seem to multiply really began to annoy her for some reason. We had to wait about an hour for Rennie to come and pick us up to take us to the airport, but he was early and we were on our way in no time at all.
After a sad farewell to Rennie at the airport we girded our loins to do battle with the Quantas reception desk. The very nice lady on the business only desk said kindly that she would look after us, much to our surprise. Clearly we are used to being treated like the hoi polloi.
Everything was going swimmingly until she asked us if we had any spare batteries, which were not in devices in out suitcases. Yes we had!, however, we had been told elsewhere that we couldn't put batteries in our hand luggage. The master packer was not pleased!
There is something rather disconcerting about opening your suitcases in public and rummaging through them to find some batteries you remember seeing but can't quite place where they are. Both suitcases had to be opened and piles of neatly packed clothes had to be shifted out until we found the little devils. In the end they were tucked into one of my shoes. Cue, repacking in public and a great deal of angry muttering from the master packer. We did note that several other people were also going through the same process at the check in desk, nothing quite like seeing everyone's clothes out at the airport is there?
Batteries stored safely in our hand luggage we were assured that our cases would go direct to Wellington and we needn't worry about them for the rest of our journey.
The flight to Sydney was good although there was more angry muttering when the served "lunch" turned out to be a spinach and feta Danish pastry which had been warmed. Naively we thought it was a starter, but no that was the whole lunch.
A Sydney we transferred easily to the international airport and treated ourselves to some much needed pasta in an Italian restaurant, this followed by shopping in duty free and a beer in the bar took up almost all of our time.
Before we knew it we were boarding our plane to Wellington, on which the on board dinner was chicken tikka or fish. Both of us had the tikka, which tasted nothing like a tikka at all. Generally the rest of the flight was boring.
We arrived in Wellington at 11.10pm found our luggage without too much trouble and took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi started with a 7 dollar fee for picking us up at the airport, so that was the end of his tip!
We arrived at the hotel about midnight and the bar was closed but a pleasant night manager opened it again for us so that we could had a beer, she also ordered us a taxi to take us to the ferry in the morning.
Who could ask for more, tired and exhausted, tetchy and somewhat stale we retired to our bed to see if we could get five hours sleep before our early morning alarm call. This travelling business can be quite exhausting at times.