Hobart

So the upside of me getting the wrong date for our MONA tickets last year is that we had to go back to Tasmania and use the credit they very kindly gave me! We were slightly earlier this year and the weather let us know it was still winter. We stayed in the same little historical cottage and it was exceedingly cold outside, and super windy, the sky was mostly like this.

We went to the markets again on Saturday morning and got sleeted on - so abandoned all plans of a walking afternoon and drove to a restaurant on the top of a hill for lunch. It was delicious and very good views but those white spots are hail thinking about becoming snow.

We hired a car this time, so on Sunday we drove down and took the car ferry over to Bruny Island which was just lovely. Feels very remote (it's "the Tasmania of Tasmania" apparently) and would be just beautiful in the summer time. 

The beaches were gorgeous but I was not tempted. Luckily it's a foody place so we tasted cheese and beer and had a very yummy lunch.

The MONA trip was also excellent - another ferry, which makes me nervous. The car ferry was only 15 minutes which is fine but the MONA ferry was half an hour ... I was happy to get off, even a fast cat up a river is too much for me. The museum itself is quite overwhelming, after a couple of hours I was glad to stop for lunch (we went to the very fancy and expensive restaurant there, it was definitely the experience). But some wonderful artworks of all different sorts. I will go back, for sure, I only saw about half of it.

At the time I was reading Bianca Bosker's book about the art world - highly recommend, very interesting and well written - but it's a bit scathing about the value of art. Not the value of art in general but the relative value assigned to different artists and works ... and whether art that relies solely on context to carry any meaning actually has any meaning? Very interesting questions and I enjoyed thinking about them but not a useful book to have in your head when you are staring at a life size replica of a tank stitched out of leather or a really quite appallingly painted picture of Harry and William or a light sculpture.