Tassie

The flight from HND to HBA was pleasant, although it was a really ancient 747-400. Business class was just as ancient, but still lie flat (very slight angle only) and that’s what’s counts. The Qantas staff was super nice, attentive, and friendly, food was good and plentiful. And they had the entire sixth season of Game of Thrones. ☺ Immigration in SYD was a breeze, no waiting time at all, luggage arrived first, and the next two hops to MEL and then Hobart went flawless.

Hobart Airport is a shed in the middle of nowhere, but who gives a shit? We got there at ca half past three in the afternoon, picked up our car and drove the 25mins across town to our accommodation, the Signalman’s Cottage on Mt Nelson. Beautiful sunshine, nice views of the bay, couldn’t have been better.

This was the first time I rented with one of the big companies, europcar to be precise, because none the smaller ones had strange or intransparent T&Cs. Turns out, the quality you get from europcar is much lower, very disappointing. One tyre blew a couple of days into our trip and when we took a closer look we saw that both rear tyres were completely bald. Apart from the fact that this would’ve been illegal in Germany we were just plain lucky that it blew while I was doing 50 a couple of hundred meters from our apartment, otherwise it would’ve been rather dangerous. So the first big Fuck You goes to Europcar! But now the tyres have been changed by a manly Bartbruder in St Helens and all is well with the bloody car.