The Tasmania Trip Report, Part Three

Trip Report Contents

Intro & Planning: How planning a trip to Hanoi got us to Tasmania

Getting There, The DC – LA Edition:  Mother Nature attacks

Two Days in LA: Interlude before the main event (This installment)

Getting There, The LA to Tassie Edition:  Crossing the globe

Arrival Day:  Hello,Hobart, nice to meet you

Day One, The Tasman Peninsula:  Seascapes and fog

Day Two, Bruny Island: Vote me off, please

Day Three, Driving Cross-Island:  Here comes the sun!

Day Four, Strahan: Cruising the clouds

Day Five, Zeehan and Queenstown:  Day of desolation

Day Six, Back to Hobart and MONA:  Hugging Tassie’s curves

Departure Day, Heading Home: The two-day day

Two Days in LA (Interlude before the main event)

Quick Summary:  We spent two days in LA at the beginning of our trip, during which we did some sightseeing and relaxing.

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Changing Hotels and Fetching the Car

Originally we planned to be in LA just one night and a full day, but the weather forecasters would have it differently and we were in LA for an additional full day.

Wednesday morning we got up, had breakfast, and headed over to fetch our rental car.  We walked the mile or so to the rental facility, rather than getting the hotel shuttle back to the airport and then another shuttle to the rental car garage.

With the car we swung back past the hotel, gathered our things, and checked into the second hotel, as we could not get a good rate for two nights at the same property.

The Scent of Sulfur

We then headed for the LaBrea Tar Pits, about a twenty-minute or so drive from the airport, through some oil fields, past strip malls and such.  Next to the tar pits is the Los Angeles County Museum, which was closed that day, though we did explore some of the grounds.

Los Angeles County Museum, With Variety Building in the Background

Grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum

A Rock on the Grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum

Philip Poses With The Rock

Los Angeles County Museum

Me Posing in Front of the Rock

The tar pits are a real oddity.  Methane gasses rise to the surface of these ponds of liquid in bubbles that pop when the hit the surface.  This activity gives the appearance that the ponds are actually boiling.  It’s all quite a sight.

Looking across the largest pit

In this photo one sees the petroleum floating in the water

Kitschy animal statue in the tar pit

Another of the tar pits

Excavation site above one of the tar pits

Excavation site; doesn't look like a very nice place to work!

Outside of the Page Museum

Interesting plants on the grounds of the tar pits

Interesting plants on the grounds of the tar pits

Lunch & Taking to the Hills

After the tar pits we headed over to West Hollywood to a vegan restaurant Philip wanted to try.  Real Food Daily published a cookbook that Philip uses at home, so we’ve had lots of the things they serve—or have served—there.  The food was good and satisfying.  After lunch we drove up to Mulholland Drive, from one end to the other, taking in some of the iconic vistas one sees across the LA Basin from the overlooks.

Philip, with the skyline over his shoulder

The iconic Hollywood sign

The Hollywood sign again

Looking out at Universal City

The LA Skyline

Looking out at rain showers in the distance

Looking down at the Capitol Records Building

Skipping Hollywood

Coming down from the hills we were in Hollywood and thought we’d have a stroll down the Walk of Fame.  Parking presented issues and a drive past the Chinese Theatre really felt like it was enough.  The place had the atmosphere of a circus and wasn’t that appealing, so we skipped it and drove out to Santa Monica.

Santa Monica

Next up we headed over to Santa Monica.  I expected to find some nice, local shops there but found mostly national chains, so we didn’t stick around long.  We did walk over to the waterfront, but found it quite chilly, with a brisk breeze rolling in off the ocean.

Clouds at dusk at Santa Monica

Clouds at dusk at Santa Monica

Palm trees sway in the chilly ocean breeze at Santa Monica

Looking out at the Santa Monica Pier

Santa Monica Pier

Philip, with the Pacific Ocean over his shoulder

Another of the Santa Monica Pier

Sign in Venice Beach

Philip's take on Venice Beach

By this time it was getting to be time to head back to the room, after a long day of work and travel the previous day, and lots of driving that day.  We did stop for a light supper at a fairly unimpressive Chinese place in Venice Beach, and then headed back to the room and turned in for the night.

A Day of Anticipation

As we were getting ready to head out from the hotel on the second day, it was clear to me why we had booked just one day in LA.  We were really excited to get to Australia and the interlude in LA just felt more in-the-way than anything else.  But, we made the most of our time there, all the while excited to get on to the next step.

Our hotel gave us a late check-out, so we were able to leave our things in the room while we headed over to the LA County Museum to have a look at the art exhibits there.  It is an expansive museum, quite spread out, and housed in several buildings.  There wasn’t anything there that was really too remarkable but it was worth a visit.

"Art."  I won't mention that the folks at JC Penny recreate this just about every day

Me in front of more "Art."  This is a bunch of black squares, framed

More ... "art"

Now, yes, big hair does indeed reign supreme in Texas, but this hair is something to aspire toward if big hair is your thing

Um ... colorful ...

Somehow this was interesting.  No clue why

Me, photographing the art and the "art"

This may look like a red room, but, in reality it is "art," or, as I call it, an oversized elevator.  Given what the energy costs must be to operate this, it had to be the single most self-indulgence piece of nonsense I'd come across in a long, long time

Iron bars with an old smock.  Odd

Good thing the smock was so horrible looking or I'd have thought a security guard had forgotten their jacket!

Exit from one of the museum's buildings

This display was in huge room, all by itself.  It was a film that played on constant loop, with a ridiculously nonsensical repetition of meaningless words.  This photo is very kind to it and looks quite nice

Beige panels line a hallway ... oh, I mean "art"

These three photos are of a piece that is basically a model car track.  Sadly it only runs on the weekend but it was really neat looking.  I cannot imagine how much patience it must have taken to imagine and create

I enjoyed the geometry of these wavy, steel panels

This installation was quite large and made for some interesting photos.  The information about it talked about the difficulty in finding spaces to "properly display" it.  Um, yeah...

From the museum we returned to the hotel to gather our things.  We also took some time to repack things so that we’d have with us what we needed for the long flight to Australia and even a few other things, in case we made it but our bags did not.

Back in the car we headed over to Manhattan Beach to have a look at the oceanfront and at the town in general.  It was a quiet day there, but there were surfers in the water and other folks strolling around on the fishing pier.  On the beach volleyball areas stretched as far as the eye could see, all going unused on a breezy March day.

Sun starts to set over the Pacific

Manhattan Beach fishing pier

Some kitschy beachfront house

Beach volleyball courts, as far as the eye can see

More volleyball possibilities

Surfers await the right wave

Surfers

Surfers

Me on the Manhattan Beach fishing pier

Bird takes flight

Perched bird

Interesting cloud floats above Manhattan Beach

We stopped into a local pub for a beer and there decided we’d have a light supper, as we wouldn’t be fed on the plane for a good five hours thereafter.

About dusk we headed back toward the airport, stopping to fuel the car and drop it off.  The shuttle to the airport was waiting for us and we soon found ourselves at the Virgin Australia departures terminal.  Now it was time for the real adventure to begin!

The Tasmania Trip Report, Part Two

Trip Report Contents

Intro & Planning: How planning a trip to Hanoi got us to Tasmania

Getting There, The DC – LA Edition:  Mother Nature attacks (This Installment)

Two Days in LA: Interlude before the main event

Getting There, The LA to Tassie Edition:  Crossing the globe

Arrival Day:  Hello,Hobart, nice to meet you

Day One, The Tasman Peninsula:  Seascapes and fog

Day Two, Bruny Island: Vote me off, please

Day Three, Driving Cross-Island:  Here comes the sun!

Day Four, Strahan: Cruising the clouds

Day Five, Zeehan and Queenstown:  Day of desolation

Day Six, Back to Hobart and MONA:  Hugging Tassie’s curves

Departure Day, Heading Home: The two-day day

Getting There, The DCA-to-LAX Edition (Mother Nature attacks)

Quick Summary:  A winter storm and crazy airport delays affect the beginning of our trip, and extend it by one extra day.

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Storm Watch

As our departure day approached, so too did an unwelcome possibility:  an early-March winter storm.  For nearly two years we had not had any real measurable snow.  Now, just as we were about to head out, it looked as though a significant snowfall would impact our big trip.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t have been so concerned, but, given that we were going so far and really needed to get that LAX flight, I was pretty worried.

Four days out from departure I called Delta to ask about getting the outbound DC flight changed; no dice.  When I called two days out the airline did agree to move our departure up one day, giving us two full days in LA before we resumed our scheduled itinerary.  So, when I went home that night I suddenly had just one night to get ready instead of two.  But, it was doable and I managed.

In the end, the snowstorm never materialized, but the threat seemed so certain that our original flight was canceled.  So, regardless of the actual weather conditions, we would never have gotten out on our flight that Wednesday.  Even though there was no snow; we felt vindicated.

A Conspiracy of Circumstances

I went to work on our new departure day with baggage in-tow.  Philip and I met at the airport, about an hour before boarding, relaxed in the lounge a little, then headed to the gate and boarded.  We took our seats on the plane, the boarding doors closed, and we thought we’d be on our way and beat the incoming storm.

There we sat for a half hour, which made us both a little nervous, as we were eating quite significantly into our sixty-minute connection time.  Eventually the pilot came on to tell us there was a “VIP hold” on the airspace and we were waiting for it to be lifted.  Great.

Eventually the hold was lifted.  We pushed back and got in line to take-off but were pretty soon told that “damage” was discovered on the runway and there would be no take-offs or landings until it was repaired.  Now, I’ve flown a good bit, but a damaged runway?  That was a first for me!

The runway repairs were fixed a lot sooner than the pilot originally told us to anticipate (an hour was expected, but it was just ten minutes or so).  We were airborne about twenty minutes later.  Being about 75 minutes late by this point I just assumed we would not make our connection.  We were down to hoping the snowstorm didn’t hit Cincinnati too hard and that we could get out the following day.

In Cincinnati, we pulled up to the gate about ten minutes before our LAX flight was to push back.  I didn’t think we’d make it but I was willing to try.  At the top of the jet-bridge we were told the flight was waiting, so I took off, just to be waved off partway down the concourse:  “Are you going to LAX?  Don’t run.  The plane has a mechanical.”  What?!  First Mother Nature is against us, then the VIP hold, then a damaged runway, and now this?!  It all seemed a little surreal.

The issue was one of the evacuation slides was not functioning (no clue how they knew this!).  We had to wait for a new slide and then for a person to come to inspect the new slide.  All of this took about two hours but we had a couple of attentive flight attendants taking care of us, so it wasn’t too bad at all.

We did finally make it do LAX, got our luggage, and then the shuttle to our hotel.  After a light snack for dinner in the hotel restaurant, it was off to bed.  It was nice to put such a long day behind us and to look forward to smoother travels.

The Tasmania Trip Report, Part One

Trip Report Contents

Intro & Planning: How planning a trip to Hanoi got us to Tasmania (This Installment)

Getting There, The DC – LA Edition:  Mother Nature attacks

Two Days in LA: Interlude before the main event

Getting There, The LA to Tassie Edition:  Crossing the globe

Arrival Day:  Hello,Hobart, nice to meet you

Day One, The Tasman Peninsula:  Seascapes and fog

Day Two, Bruny Island: Vote me off, please

Day Three, Driving Cross-Island:  Here comes the sun!

Day Four, Strahan: Cruising the clouds

Day Five, Zeehan and Queenstown:  Day of desolation

Day Six, Back to Hobart and MONA:  Hugging Tassie’s curves

Departure Day, Heading Home: The two-day day

Introduction & Planning (How planning a trip to Hanoi got us to Tasmania)

Quick Summary:  Because Delta points are so difficult to use, we couldn’t use them to get to Hanoi and decided to instead go to Australia; we ended up with a ten-day trip to the southern third of the Island of Tasmania.

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Planning a Special Trip to Vietnam Australia

We began planning for Philip’s [March] birthday the previous September.  We wanted to use some of my Delta points to go to Vietnam.  Although more people than ever are going from the US to Vietnam for vacations, it’s still a destination that is a bit on the exotic side.  But, as we would discover, the real oddity in our plan wasn’t our destination but was trying to use Delta points to get there.

I began calling asking for a date range, which became more flexible with each call.  Over the course of a couple of months I began to just ask for “two business class seats from any US gateway anytime during March.”  That seemed flexible enough to me; it wasn’t flexible enough for Delta, though.  The best they were ever able to do priced out at over 750,000 points for two tickets, and that for an itinerary that was just horrible and didn’t work at all.  So, it was back to the drawing board.

More looking and research brought me to the discovery that Delta points are pretty easy to spend to go to Australia on Virgin Australia.  Oddly enough, flying using Delta points on Delta to Australia would have cost a fortune, but flying there using Delta points on Virgin Australia, at 150,000 points each, was a relative bargain.  (As an aside, Delta points are notoriously difficult to use.)

Philip had never been very interested in going to Australia:  he thought it a long way to go to be in cities that we imagined to be very much like American cities.  Somehow, during my research, the idea of Tasmania came to me.  It was very rural, naturally beautiful, exotic, and about as far away as we could get and still be on the planet.  And, when I looked at using points, it was really easy and pretty cheap.  (I wrote about this back in November, and you can read that here.)

Before much longer we were booked from Los Angeles to Hobart, through Melbourne, all in business class.  Over the next few months I kept calling back and managed to get the flights from DC to LAX added on, but never got the return, so, eventually, we just bought our own tickets back from LA.

Our Itinerary

As we planned things out, our first thought was to see as much of the island as possible.  More research showed that we were way too ambitious and that we’d end up seeing nothing but highway as we shuttled from place to place.  We eventually came round to a more modest plan that, as it turns out, could have still used more paring back.

Our itinerary as we finally booked it would have taken us out on a Wednesday evening.  We’d overnight near LAX that night and spend all day Thursday in LA, before getting a late flight out to Melbourne that night.  From Melbourne we’d fly onward to Hobart (Tasmania), arriving mid-day Saturday.  We’d fly back home the following Saturday, picking up an American Airlines flight in LA for the trip back from the West Coast.

On Tasmania, we’d spend three nights in Hobart, then drive across the island to Strahan (pronounced “Straw-n,” like “drawn,” but with an “S”), spend three nights there, and then a quick overnight near the Hobart airport before our early morning flight out the following Saturday.  But, alas, what is it they say about the best-laid plans?  Exactly, and ours were indeed laid to waste.

Our planned flight path:  Washington National to Detroit to Los Angles to

Melbourne to Melbourne to Hobart to Melbourne to Los Angeles

to Dallas to Washington National

Tasmania Part Two

We have had a busy few days on Tasmania.  Sunday we drove down the Tasman Peninsula to Port Arthur and then stopped past some excellent landscapes on the way back.  Port Arthur was nice, but the real highlight of the day was seeing spectacular seaside cliffs and things like that.  (When I get home I'll be posting some photos.)

Monday we drove down and onto Bruny Island, and down the length of the island to its southern most point, which is breathtaking.  Of course, we were on twenty miles of dirt road to get to it, but we made it and the ocean, cliffs, beaches, and lighthouse rewarded us.  Monday night we had dinner with some new friend we met through a colleague.

Yesterday (Tuesday), was our first sunny day on Tasmania and it was wonderful.  We started our day at a wildlife preserve, where we met a wombat, observed Tasmania devils, pet a kuola, and walked among a huge population of kangaroos (could have been a hundred of them!), and got to feed, pet, and talk to them.

After the preserve, we drove across the southern part of the island, from Hobart to Strahan.  The drive isn't that far distance-wise, but the up-and-down of the sometimes extremely-curvy roads made it a five-plus hour trek.  But, all worthwhile; and, like I wrote earlier, photos to come.

Today (Wednesday), we are in Strahan and set to go on a river cruise in about an hour.  The weather, as is apparently the norm here on the southwest coast of Tasmania, goes from downpours to sun to showers, and all that within about fifteen minutes.  We are hoping for smooth sailing and great sightseeing.

Tomorrow it's exploring some of the other nearby villages, the mountains, and the coast, before the drive back to Hobart on Friday.  Time flies on vacation!

Tasmania Update I

We finally made it to Tasmania!  But, it wasn't easy.

Tuesday we managed to beat out a snowstorm that never happened (though our original flight for Wednesday was canceled, so we were vindicated), survived a VIP-induced ground-hold and then a damaged runway at DCA, then mechanical issues at Cincinnati, but made it to LA.

We did some light sightseeing in LA Wednesday and also Thursday before we dropped off the rental car and headed to the airport.

The flight Thursday night/Friday/Saturday morning on Virgin Australia was quite nice, with great food and service, and a good bit of sleep.  Our onward flight to Hobart was quick and easy, but they still managed a meal-service on the 55-minute flight!

Arrival day on Tasmania was gray with occasional light rain-showers, 70s, and muggy.  We went to the famous Salamanca Market and just explored the Hobart City Center.  For dinner we celebrated Philip's birthday with a special dinner at an excellent restaurant.

First impressions:  very rural in from the airport, with lots of farms, rolling hills and mountains; the people seem very nice; and, it's ridiculously expensive, such as $4.50 for a litre bottle of water at a grocery and a $10 draft beer at a random pub!

Today we'll fetch the rental car and head down to Port Arthur, touring along the way.