Two Museums and a Little Distillery

After our full day excursion, today we got a later start and would visit some local museums.  We started with a walk through Franklin Park in downtown Hobart.  Tasmania, and Australia in general, has lots of great city parks.  Wide open spaces, fountains and seating.  We always saw many locals in these parks.

After exiting the park, we headed to the Tasmanian museum.  I didn't know it before we left the hotel. but this had free admission!! 

One of the first exhibits I found was where a local artist was doing pencil drawings of extinct species.  When one was finished, the sketch would be erased and the eraser shavings were left at the bottom.  Then she would start drawing a new extinct creature.  You could see remnants of the past sketch on the paper and the addition of the shavings reinforced the finality of these animals.  Sad and poignant.

The rest of the museum was a collection of local history including art and maritime exhibits. There was also one all about how Australia moved from the shilling monetary system to the Australian dollar. 

One museum was enough for the morning.  We needed to get some lunch!!  I had some reviews and found a local pub with good food and a large beer selection.  Tom McHugo's here we come!!

We tried some smoked sausage that came with pickled fennel.  Such a great idea to pickle the fennel which also was featured in the sausage.  The sausage was nicely smoked with a good toothy bite.

We also got an order of scotch eggs served with a creamy mustard sauce.  Scotch eggs are cooked eggs that are surrounded by sausage and then deep fried.  One problem I tend to find with these is that the eggs are typically overdone.  These eggs were terrific and still had soft boiled yolks.  That tells me they really thought about how to cook the eggs before breading them so the end product wasn't overdone.  They were delicious.  Creamy, salty and tangy with the mustard.  The mustard was also a great dip for  the sausages.

Lastly, we tried chicken parm.  Australians appear to be fascinated with chicken parm as I saw so many place advertising the different types of parms they had.  This one had all the things you would look for in parm.  Crispy breading, broiled cheese on top and a tomatoey sauce.    It was served with chips which seems untraditional, but for Australia it is authentic.  Chips seem to come with most things.

This place had many special beers including Strawberry Fields Forever from Hobart Brewing,  This was a delightful beer, relatively low alcohol at 4.7%.  It almost tasted like a wine.  While we were here, I also tried the Sour Pumpkin Ale from Two Metres Tall and Smokin' Bagpipes from Seven Sheds.  I loved both of them.  Too often pumpkin ales are too sweet for me and become cloying.  Making it a sour solved that issue and created a  great tasting beer.  The Smokin' Bagpipes had some great smoky flavor along with hints of scotch.   It was high alcohol at 7.5% ABV, but it was balanced and didn't taste boozy which is a problem with a lot of beers over 7% ABV.

While we were at Tom McHugo's, my wife and I talked about how we wouldn't be able to get to one of the signature museums in Hobart called MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) since it was outside the downtown area.  We weren't interested in driving there or taking an UBER.  While we were doing research for our next stop, I saw where there was a ferry from downtown that would take you to MONA.  That seems to be the universe making a decision for us.  My wife booked us tickets for the next available trip.  We still needed a destination before our ferry left.  Lark Distillery is a place we wanted to visit and we'd have about an hour before the ferry to try their spirits.  I had the bourbon flight which had all four of the ones  they make.  Cask Strength was my favorite, having the most bourbon flavor.

After the flights, we headed to the ferry dock.  It is easy to spot the MONA ferry boat.

When booking our tickets, there was an option to get Posh Pit tickets which meant you got to sit in a special lounge and had open bar and snacks included.  Of course we had to try it!!  There was plenty of comfortable seating.  We quickly received plate of marinated veggies, cheese, meats and hummus.  We decided to get some dry rose which was great with the meat and cheese.

It was about a 30 minute ride to the museum.

One of the first "exhibits" we found was a slot machine for beer!!

You used a credit card to be able to pull the lever.  And there were several Moo Brew beers available.  Moo Brew is a local brewer in Tasmania.  There was also a Foster's Oil Can beer which was the only time I had seen this in Australia.  If this was Let's Make a Deal, Foster's would have been the ZONK prize.  We wanted anything but Foster's.  Luckily we got the Moo Brew Pilsner.

I have been to several modern art museums around the world.  This museum had some of the craziest exhibits I have ever seen. 

This was a water feature that spelled out the most commonly searched words on Google every few seconds.

This exhibit was an optical illusion.  You walked out to a bridge and it looked like it was a mirrored reflection of the walls.

In reality, it was a large pool of oil that was on either side of the bridge that caused the reflection.  Had never seen anything like it.

This was an exhibit of the human digestive system.  It has the various stages of digestion from left to right.  "It" eats every four hours.  The right most vessel is exactly what you know is the last process in human digestion.  And the aroma in the room makes that very clear.  This is definitely the most over the top exhibit I have ever seen in a museum.

If you want an interesting experience where each new exhibit will definitely keep your mind thinking, you need to visit the MONA!!  We had visited as many exhibits as we had time for and now it was almost time for our ferry.  We went outside to wait and found the museum cafe which had several local beers.  I did a Moo Brew flight of their Dark Ale, Single Hop Enigma, Hefeweizen and Pale Ale.  All very tasty although the Dark Ale was my favorite.

We took the ferry back to downtown and were also in the Posh Pit.  Instead of cheese and meats, this time we received some sweet treats of what I will call truffles even though those are usually round and covered in chocolate.  From left to right we had raspberry chocolate, tiramisu, brownie and pistachio.  All were tasty although I liked the tiramisu the best.  

We docked at the pier and started  the short walk back to our hotel apartment.    We needed some dinner.  Earlier in the week I had spotted an asian dumpling restaurant that looked good.  We decided to head to Pot Sticker Dumpling House.  We were pretty hungry from all the walking.  We started with an order of pan fried dumplings.  These were perfectly crunchy on one side and puffy and doughy on the other.  With savory, moisty pork filling inside.  Usually you might want a dipping sauce, but these were perfect by themselves.

Then we had an order of steamed pork buns.  These are usually some of my favorite comfort foods and these ones didn't fail me.  Pillowy bundles with sweet and salty BBQ pork filling.

Green Beans with Minced Pork was next.  Al dente green beans in a pork based spicy sauce.

 Beef fried rice was next.  The fresh herbs helped elevate this one.

And one of my all time favorite dishes, soup dumplings!!  If you have never had these, they are sealed dumplings which have meat or vegetables and hot soup.  There is a technique to eating these where you need to take a small bite out of the corner of the dumpling and then drink the broth.  Then you are able to eat the dumpling.  At least that is the way I was taught twenty years ago at Joe Shanghai in downtown NYC.  If you have never tried these, order them the next time you are at your favorite noodle house.

After a long day, it was time to get back to the hotel and get ready for our flight to Melbourne in the morning.   Hard to believe that our time in Tasmania has come to an end.  But we have three nights in Melbourne.  Look for those blogs to be uploaded soon.