Philippe's Chocolate & French Pastries (Auckland) have some decadent products

To our delight we discovered Philippe's Chocolate & French Pastries over the weekend.  We went to their store in Great North Road where they had a number of tasty delights that were begging for us to try.

We bought several cakes and a selection of chocolates and enjoyed them all (except for the chilli chocolate but I suspect we may have had a dud batch of them). The chocolates were flavoursome and they had a few different flavours (such as Earl Grey and Mint & Rosemary that were good for the novelty factor).

In terms of the cakes, the Maharaja was a silky smooth subtle white chocolate delectable finished with a dusting of chocolate powder. This was topped with a white chocolate cigar encased within a russian scroll.

The pear tartlet was packed with flavour and beautifully finished with almonds and a light glaze. We also accompanied this with a praline slice.

As for their packaging it is in alignment with their cost.

Markets, Port Arthur and Richmond

Jam packed today (and my first post of the trip!  Simon’s doing such a great job I figured I’d leave him to it.)

Up before the crack of dawn, well, it felt that way, and off to Jackman & McRoss bakery for a quick breakfast and a couple of takeaway pastries. 

Then down to the Saturday morning Salamanca Markets in time to be there before some of the stalls had even set up - in our experience this is the very best time to arrive at markets, avoiding a least a little of the crowds.  Although, this market is so extensive that by the time we had ambled past every single stall, it was actually fairly well crammed!

Great market, lots of great things to see and some not so good things to smell (neither of us can stand the smell of incense - fortunately there weren’t too many places burning it, but enough to notice!) and some great things to hear - one guy singing 80’s ballads with a beautiful voice, and harpist at another point.  We both made small purchases then grabbed a crab, sorry, cab, but she really was a crabby patches, up to the Avis office to pick up our rental car.

That sorted, we headed down the coast to Port Arthur to visit the site of the Penal Colony. We wandered around with the initial working tour, this was really very informative, and contained much of the info that we received again later on the boat trip around the harbour (you wouldn’t miss much if you missed your scheduled sailing). 
We grabbed a bit for lunch in the museum - which used to be the asylum, checked the database for any relatives who may have spent time there (no hits!) and then wandered off to the harbour tour as mentioned above. Simon did a little more exploring on the way while I took a few photos, but other than commenting that the governors house was climate controlled he didn’t mention anything so I’ll assume he didn’t see anything that really interested him!
We both listened to a little of the audio tour, but decided that the informative bits had mostly been included in the original 40 minute walking tour, although I did enjoy listening to some of the diary readings from the period.

We decided at this point we’d seen as much as we wanted to, so headed back up the coast to the historic village of Richmond.  Took a few photos of the bridge….

And Simon (I asked him to smile. Just smile!)…
 
Drove through the absolutely beautiful little village with all of it’s gorgeous stone buildings and stopped for Devonshire Teas at Ashmore on Bridge Street.  Seriously - these were the BEST scones I’ve ever eaten (sorry Mum!) and Simon loved his iced berry tea. So that brings us up to date again.  No decision on what we’re doing for dinner tonight yet.  We’ve got one more full day in Hobart before heading up to Launceston, although I expect tomorrow we’ll head down to the South coast in a Westerly direction and take in a few vineyards and dairies.  Stay tuned and you’ll find out!

CREDITS: all food and drink photos are Simon’s, the rest are mine.

Battery Point, An awesome bakery / cafe and Hobart CBD

This morning I went for a walk through the streets of Battery Point and came across “Jackman & McRoss”, an excellent bakery / cafe located in Hampden Road just across from Waterloo Crescent.  They have lots of indoor seating and a small amount of outdoor seating out the front. 

I had a cafe style meal that consisted of scrambled eggs encased in Tasmanian Smoked Salmon on a brioche (Hmmm, maybe I wrong here) base.  It was excellent as was the Skinny Latte I had with it.  I’m slowly getting used to ordering Skinny Latte’s as opposed to Trim Latte’s, which are often met with a confused look in Australia.

I then wandered through Princes Park that had what looked like a pretty cool kids play area.  Well, I thought it was cool anyway and noted that it had sand as its protective landing for kids.

 

From Princes Park I walked along the Esplanade (which didn’t have a lot going for it) to Salamanca Place and cooled down in Parliament Square and watched people on a trapeze setup for the New Years celebrations this evening.

Elizabeth Mall was one of the many places I ventured to in the CBD.  The shopping area felt quite relaxed although I found that some of the malls were a bit outdated.  There are however some beautiful character buildings located in the vicinity of the CBD.

I then met up with Jane and got some Garlic Mussels and a nice Bruny Island Cheese Platter from the Taste festival.  I also tried a “Two Metre Tall” Tasmanian Bitter Ale, that was not to my liking; I thought it actually tasted a bit like a dirty homebrew.  I followed this with a really nice Extra Zingy Ginger Beer from Gillespie’s Ginger Beer.

The temperature today kept creeping up higher and is apparently quite abnormal for Hobart; I noticed at one point it was 36.5˚ Celsius.  Thankfully it is looking cooler for tomorrow.