Last Day in Tassie

DAY 4: CHOCOLATE

Today we were checking out of the resort and sailing back to Melbourne. First thing, we went back to the lake (still had an hour and a half left on our 24 hour park pass) and took sunrise photos. Smoke filled the air, most likely a ‘fuel reduction’ where they burn out the undergrowth of the forest so that it doesn’t turn into an out of control wildfire in the summer. It blew over fairly quickly, but we still got a good mix of photos:

Then we headed back to the resort to stuff down another free breakfast and check out. We toured the photo gallery, taking note of professional technique, feeling inspired to read the trials and tribulations of the photographers in their printed notes about each picture. Seems it’s normal to take 200 shots of the same thing and only find one of them ‘breath taking’. Maybe we could do this, after all. We’d need better cameras, of course. And the initiative. But we might just have a chance.

Feeling hopeful, we got on the road and started back up north, to Devonport where the Spirit of Tasmania would depart from. But Tasmania is known for a few things: Devils, which we’d seen; Cheese, which we’d tasted and splurged on; scenery, which we’d taken hundreds of photos of; and Chocolate.

Enter: Anvers.

Anvers is a small chocolate factory slash restaurant that makes fine chocolate, truffles and fudge. It doesn’t look like a factory at all but more like an old colonial home. Gardens surround the buildings and inside, nice wood floors and heavy wooden tables and chairs make up the dining area. And the cakes.

The cakes.

We had just stuffed ourselves at the breakfast buffet, but here we were, two hours later, tasting chocolate and what the heck, let’s have lunch. And Cake. We ordered small sandwiches which turned out to be not small at all, and a mug of ‘the best hot chocolate’, which was, in fact, pretty damn chocolatey. Yum. After stuffing down a turkey and cranberry sandwich, we shared a piece of chocolate cherry cake that was made with real cherries and lots of moist chocolate cake and cream and chocolate shavings and… I’m going into another sugar high just remembering it. After eating, we waddled into the chocolate shop and stocked up on truffles and managed to fit in a couple more samples. Now, we could die happy.

Riding our sugar high into Devonport, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon book shopping. The smoke from this morning was back in full force, and the entire town smelled like a wood fire. Which isn’t so bad; there are worse things in the world to smell like. We scoured the shelves of three book stores and found quite a few promising stories before heading over to sit in line to board the ship.

An hour later, we were driving into the Spirit’s gut. We found our cabin, picked through the gift shop for souvenirs, then shared a dinner before planting ourselves in front of the TV with a couple of new books. Tomorrow morning at 7, we would dock in Melbourne, Caroline would go back to work for the first of a two-day stint, and I would blog in the foyer of her office building.