Fauna Lou: breakfast + a trip to the museum

My grandmother has come down from the other side of the country to visit! She's a lovely little lady, as most grandmothers are, but the whole family is either at school or work, including me. However, on Wednesday I had a day off, so I thought I might show her the fairly new museum in town. And hey, a day out in town means we need to fuel ourselves, right? So of course, we went out for breakfast.

I drove us in, dropping my mother at work, and my sister at school, before stopping at a great little place for breakfast, Retro Cafe. If you live in the Hobart area, you have to go there - great service, great food, cute spot for a bite to eat. Practically the moment we found a spot to eat we were given menus and asked if we wanted any coffee (soy latte, please!). We both decided to go for mushrooms on sourdough, because a) it was a special, and b) mushrooms on sourdough. Yum! The mushrooms were sourced locally, which made it a thousand times better.

Oh that! That's just a dinosaur peeking out of a window. What else?

I have to add here that this was my first time having a proper coffee in months, and oh my god was it good. I was worried I would've lost the taste for the bitterness but this was a perfect latte. Milky, a little frothy, and just the right amount of bitterness for me. The mushrooms were gorgeous. They were a bit of an indulgence as they were obviously cooked in butter, but that made them so yummy. Lots of pepper on top, and another flavour which I can't quite pinpoint, but it was delicious. All in all, a hearty breakfast! So hearty in fact I couldn't quite finish the whole thing. I'm happy to go back and try again though. ;)

The euphoria of a good breakfast wore off quickly as we found out we had, ahem, forgotten to pay for parking.. Oops. There's a first for everything though, right? Unfortunately even for parking tickets.

We brushed that off quickly and drove to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to get our dose of culture. I'd been there once before with my boyfriend about a year ago, and not much had changed but it was so interesting that I could still go back again twice more! It took a while to find a parking space, but this time we remembered to pay straight away!

The TMAG was beautiful! It was really nicely lit so that the rooms in general were dark, but all the exhibitions were lit up. There were also lots of different exhibitions, but we couldn't get around to them all seeing as we only had 1 hour parking and I was due to meet my boyfriend at noon. I have to say, there is a lot of taxidermy, and although the majority of it was done well, some not so much. A tad creepy to look at, let's say.

I've always found Indigenous Australian culture very fascinating, and really important for society these days to be aware of, so I was glad to see that the Aboriginal exhibition was still up.

A hut that supposedly fits 6-7 people inside.

They even had a recording of an Indigenous woman singing a traditional Aboriginal song, the recording being over 100 years old, if I recall correctly. It was interesting seeing a photo of how they recorded her voice, and how we could listen to that now out of a little speaker.

I love looking at animals, but this display freaked me out a little.

Don't they look creepy just lying there? Dead birds always make me really sad. Unfortunately, having pet cats I do see a lot of them.

We made our way through the museum slowly, until we realised we had taken half our time to only visit three rooms! That was when our saunter turned more into a brisk walk. We didn't exactly want to risk getting another parking ticket.

A room I found really fascinating was one that looked at technology evolving over the years. They had televisions, movie recordings, telephones, maps, cameras, audio recorders, radios, all sorts of things. All things that were in my hand the entire time! It was a funny thought to have.

Something that I can't do with my phone: chocolate making! Looks like something out of Willy Wonka if you ask me.

In the same room there was also a wall covered with political posters that I liked to take a bit of time to read.

My favourite exhibition was the last one we visited on the Antarctic, which unfortunately we had to rush through as we only had ten minutes left before our parking metre ran out. Which meant no photos! Except for this one, for which I can think of a multitude of captions.

They certainly look like they're having a good laugh, don't they?

All in all, it was a lovely morning out. What followed was some very bad city driving, embarrassing parallel parking, and a tiny bit of Christmas shopping. But I got my afternoon with my boyfriend, which made me very happy. :)

How has your week been? Have you had any days off yet, and what have you got up to?

I'll leave you with some various photos from the trip today.