A Rainy Day in Hobart
On the best kind of slow day, the weather decides for you.
There is a particular pleasure to a rainy day in Hobart. The city does not fight the weather — it leans into it, offering warm rooms, unhurried meals and the kind of quiet that only comes when the sky has given everyone permission to slow down. For guests at Captains Cottage, a wet day is not something to be endured. It is, in its own way, a gift.
Begin the morning without urgency. The cottage is made for exactly this: the deep claw foot bath, the French doors fogged with warmth, the sound of rain on the courtyard garden. There is no reason to rush anywhere. Make coffee, pull on something warm, and let the day find its own shape.
Lose Yourself in a Bookshop
When the rain sets in, Hobart Bookshop on Salamanca Place is one of the finest places in the city to disappear for an hour or three. Independent, characterful and wonderfully stocked, it is the kind of shop that rewards unhurried browsing. Pull something from a shelf you would never normally reach for. Find a corner. Stay a while. From Captains Cottage, it is a gentle ten-minute walk downhill through Battery Point, arriving at Salamanca Place with the sandstone warehouses ahead of you and the bookshop waiting on your left.
For those who love a good bookshop, Fullers Bookshop in Hobart's CBD on Collins Street is another beloved local institution. Spread across multiple levels within one of the city's oldest commercial buildings, it offers a more traditional bookseller experience, with creaking floors, quiet corners and shelves that seem to stretch endlessly. It is the sort of place where you arrive looking for one title and leave carrying three. Pair your visit with a coffee or soup of the day from the Fullers café and let the weather become part of the experience rather than something to escape.
A Long Lunch
If it’s a cold, wet Sunday afternoon, few things are as satisfying as a table at Fico on Macquarie Street. The handmade pasta and unhurried service are perfectly suited to a day when there is nowhere to be. Order the whole menu if the mood allows. Let lunch become the afternoon.
Alternatively, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday Ogee on Murray Street welcomes those who want to eat well without ceremony: natural wines, bold small plates and a room that hums with warmth from the moment you step inside.
At Fico (left) and Ogee (right), lunch unfolds slowly. Images: Jesse Hunniford and Matt Breen.
Back to the Cottage
By late afternoon, the pull of the cottage becomes irresistible, and the bath has been waiting for this moment all day. The cottage provides luxurious bath bubbles for exactly this kind of afternoon. Let the water fill slowly, pour generously, and sink in. The French doors look out to the courtyard garden, where the rain is doing its quiet work on the garden. There is nowhere else to be.
When you are ready, settle into something warm and find your corner of the cottage. The light is fading now, soft and grey through the windows, and the evening has not yet made any demands. Open the book you carried home and let it take you somewhere else.
Pour a glass of something discovered and let the rain outside become part of the atmosphere rather than the weather. There is a particular kind of contentment that only arrives when warmth and stillness and a good book converge, and Captains Cottage has been arranged with precisely this in mind.
A Final Note from Captains Cottage
This is what the cottage has always been for: the unhurried evening, the glass refilled, the sense that the world outside is doing its own thing and you are, for this moment, beautifully separate from it. Hobart in the rain is not a lesser version of itself. It is simply the city in a different register, and the cottage, warm and still around you, is the finest place from which to receive it.