Tasmania

I am definitely all about Colorado when it comes to places to live and settle down in. But I am also a traveler and a huge advocate for living in many places during my life. Moving to North Carolina for school was one of the best decisions I have ever made, in addition to taking almost an entire year after graduation to travel. 

I have recently been, yet again, stung by the travel bug, and since I don't (yet) have any big trips planned in the near future (with the exception of our annual girl's trip to Arizona!), I decided to use my blog as an outlet to reminisce and recommend based on places I visited during my year of travels. 

(I'm going to try to post about one new location every few weeks, and they are in no relevant order)

First stop... Tasmania.

There are a TON of locations on my 'list of places I want to travel to,' and I can honestly say that Tasmania was not one of them. But after a super last minute planned week spent on the island, I am dying to go back one day.

We spent all of December 2010 in Australia, touring down the east coast and stopping whenever we felt like it. Once we were in Melbourne, Felix had the idea to fly down to Tasmania for a week. It was sort of like a "why not? we're only here once" kinda thing. 

After a 1-hour flight, we arrived at the tiny airport in Hobart, Tasmania with no plan. We found the cheapest rental car possible, and set off to the closest tourist center. We ended up doing a 3 day trek on Cradle Mountain, and a 2 day hike through Freycinet National Park. Both completely amazing and so different. Cradle mountain was an inclined, rough-terrain trail, scattered with tiger snakes and extreme hikers. We camped in a small clearing at a base camp and ate peanut butter sandwiches overlooking Mount Ida and Lake St. Clair.

Freycinet was far more touristy at first. The trail was packed with families and day hikers for the first 3 hours. We stopped for a quick lunch before making the final push to the 'campground' we had our eye on on the map. A few hours later, we were faced with...

It was breathtaking and 100% ours. We didn't see a soul our entire 2 days on the beach. We set our tent up in a small clearing just above the beach. Curious but bold wombats and wallabies ran around everywhere. Felix was the only one brave enough to dip into the Arctic waters; I was sore, tired and happy just laying on the beach and reading.

We stayed the next night in our car to save some money, and for our last night, we splurged on a room at an adorable Hostel in Hobart; we cooked pasta and took our first shower in 6 days. Before we flew out the next morning, we visited the charming Salamanca Street market and indulged in German sausages and hot tea. 

We managed to basically hit every major region of the island in our short week; but we didn't even make a dent in the endless trekking, rafting/kayaking trips, and biking the country offers. So if you're ever in the Southeast Aussie region and have at least a week to spare, I highly recommend visiting Tassie!