Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Saturday | January 14, 2017

Today was a rather slow day as jet lag has not yet vacated my system.

After breakfast at my apartment, I decided to take a walk. I had intended to go to the museum everyone is talking about, but just didn’t have the energy to do a museum today, likely will go tomorrow.

I found myself in a wonderful little market that occurs every Saturday. Although I took pictures, I had not yet formatted my new rugged SD card, so I don’t have those pictures to share with you. It was about an eight-block long fair selling everything from carved wooden bowls, to foodstuffs, to wool sweaters and gloves people would pick up as last minute necessities before going to Antarctica.

I started by buying a big, fat sausage roll.

Then, it was fried dough balls, stuffed with berries. I bought a jar of local honey and took a (now lost) photograph of the hive.

I also bought fresh blueberries, which were quite expensive, $19AU.

I thought carrots would be good for a healthy snack.

And of course, I had to purchase at least one non-perishable souvenir – these three pairs of Tasmanian bamboo socks; yes, bamboo.

I decided to have lunch out with the locals, so I stopped by a boat attached to a pier and got a basket of fried calamari and chips. It was drizzling a bit, but that made it all the more atmospheric.

When I got back to the ship, I had intended to rest. All hell broke out, this time in a good way. It seems that one of the people who wanted to buy our apartment lives in Australia and is keen to sail with the ship tomorrow on the Ross Sea Expedition. The manifest for paying guests is closed, so, after a series of tortured telephone calls, I arranged to allow his family to sail as our guests and avoided the direct payment of money. Instead, he will tender a non-refundable offer payment that allows him to commence negotiations with me over the sale of the apartment. I thought it was genius, and certainly a nice little financial play. After all, we have been getting screwed many ways, so I was very happy to be able to pull this one out of a hat.

Because of the aforementioned successful negotiations, it became necessary for me to have the bellman move all of my clothes out of that apartment so it would be available to them.

Finally, sometime later in the afternoon, I was able to lie down for a little while, even though it did not constitute a nap.

Eventually I got up, showered and dressed and met friends in the Plaza before we walked to our dinner reservation at Franklin. It was a tapas restaurant and the food was very creative.

Once we got back, we all went up to Regatta to listened to the trio. My friends didn’t care much for them so they left. It was going to be the last night of actual drinking for a while– the seas are supposed to be horrible the next few days –so I had an extra glass of wine or two before retiring to the apartment at around 11:30 PM. (We learned that the seas the first two days out of port may approximate 20 feet!)