Things to Do on a Rainy Day in Hobart: Indoor Activities & Cozy Places

Looking for things to do on a rainy day in Hobart? If you were planning on mountain views and spending most of the day outside, you might need to shuffle a few things around. Luckily, there’s plenty to do here without spending the entire afternoon in a wet jacket.

Hobart has underground art galleries, bookshops with their own cafés, whisky tastings, and some very tempting places to hide away over lunch. You can easily fill a day exploring indoors, although if you’ve been driving and hiking your way around Tasmania, staying in for a few hours might sound pretty appealing too.

Here are some of the best things to do in Hobart when it rains, starting with the one that doesn’t require putting your shoes on.

Stay In and Have a Proper Lazy Day

There’s always a temptation to squeeze as much as possible into a trip, especially somewhere with as much to explore as Tasmania. But if you’ve been hiking, driving, and moving between accommodation every couple of nights, a rainy morning is a pretty good excuse to stay put. And I might assume that you probably deserve it.

Make some breakfast, get comfortable, and enjoy having nowhere you need to be for a few hours. Recharge your battery for more exploring when it clears!

Watch Movies or Start a New Series

Get some snacks and finally watch the film you’ve spent months saying you’ll get around to. Browse through streaming services and find something new to binge!

Travel movies are fun if you want inspiration for the next trip, although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with watching several episodes of something completely unrelated to Tasmania. Sometimes you just want a blanket and a ridiculous show.

Play Games

If you’re traveling with other people, get out a pack of cards, borrow a board game from your accommodation, or find something you can play together on your phones or laptops.

There are plenty of online multiplayer games too. You can play online card games or video games, or many enjoy spending some time at an online casino for some low key entertainment between adventures. Cards, board games, and multiplayer puzzles are other ways to spend an afternoon playing together.

This is also where staying somewhere with a communal lounge comes in handy. I love how easy hostels can make it to meet people, even when nobody has particularly ambitious plans for the day.

Edit Your Travel Photos and Videos

A rainy afternoon is a chance to deal with all the photos you keep taking and promising yourself you’ll edit or go through later… it’s a problem I have VERY often.

Edit your favorites, put together a video, back everything up, or finally delete some of the nearly identical photos from yesterday’s lookout (which I am also guilty of). You can also send a few to friends and family or post the things you’ve been meaning to share while you still remember where you took them.

Plan the Rest of Your Tasmania Trip

Use a little downtime to book your next accommodation, organize transport, or save the places you want to visit before you’re back on the road… it’s easier to do it now than while sitting on the bus tomorrow.

Discover Tasmania’s itineraries are useful for turning a map full of saved places into a route you can actually follow. It’s worth sorting out which stops belong together before you’re halfway across the island.

Explore Hobart’s Museums and Galleries

Okay, now to the actual out-of-the-hotel things to do in Hobart on a rainy day. Museums are an obvious rainy-day answer, but there’s quite a bit of variety here. MONA can take up most of your day, while the museums near the waterfront are easier to combine with lunch and a wander around town.

Spend a Few Hours at MONA

The Museum of Old and New Art is one of the best-known things to do in Hobart, and conveniently for weather, you’ll spend much of your visit underground.

Built into the sandstone at Berriedale, MONA displays ancient objects alongside contemporary art across several subterranean floors. Some of the work is confronting, and the unusual building is part of the experience, so allow proper time to explore rather than squeezing it in before another booking.

Give the galleries at least three or four hours, with longer if you’re eating there. Download the O app before arriving; it explains the works as you make your way around.

The ferry from Brooke Street Pier takes around half an hour each way, or you can get there by road. MONA currently opens Thursday to Monday, so this one does depend on which day the rain arrives! You can book museum entry and the ferry through MONA’s visitor page.

Visit the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, or TMAG, is near the waterfront and covers Tasmania’s art, natural history, and cultural heritage.

Come here to learn more about the island, including Tasmanian Aboriginal history and its wildlife, with changing exhibitions alongside the collections. There’s plenty to look through if your group has different interests, and you can spend longer in whichever galleries catch your attention.

General entry is free, which is always welcome when you’ve already been paying for accommodation, transport, and seemingly endless meals out. Check the TMAG visitor page for seasonal opening days, particularly if you’re visiting on a Monday.

Explore Maritime Museum Tasmania

If you’re interested in ships and sailing, Maritime Museum Tasmania explores the island’s maritime history and its connections with the sea… and being a huge island and all, there is of course some interesting content to explore!

It’s close to TMAG, so you can visit both without heading to another part of town. This makes a handy pairing for a wet morning, especially if you enjoy learning about the history of the places you’re walking around.

Browse the Galleries Around Salamanca

Salamanca’s sandstone warehouses are worth exploring beyond market day. The Salamanca Arts Centre is home to TONS of galleries, shops, and artist studios, with changing exhibitions in spaces including the upstairs Long Gallery.

Have a look at what’s showing, browse the shops, and leave time to see what catches your eye. This is also somewhere to look for locally made gifts if you want to bring home something from Tasmania.

You’ll still go outside between some stops, but there are plenty of places to duck into along the way.

Play Games, Go Bowling, or Even Try Laser Tag

If you’ve reached the point where you can’t absorb any more exhibition information, spend a few hours bowling or playing games instead. These are especially easy choices when you’re traveling with friends or trying to keep the whole family entertained, and are ALWAYS one of my favorite rainy day activities in Hobart or anywhere else in the world… you can always find a fun place to play games.

Go Bowling in Moonah

Zone Bowling Moonah has 24 bowling lanes, an arcade, and a licensed café, so you can play a couple of games, bowl, and get something to eat without leaving the building… perfect for a rainy day stop.

It’s on Main Road in Moonah, about a 15-minute drive from central Hobart. This could be a full afternoon activity easily, or you can add it onto a couple museums too.

Play Laser Tag at Zone 3

Zone 3 Hobart is inside the Village Cinema complex on Collins Street, right in the city center. It’s an indoor laser-tag venue, so expect to spend your time moving around and trying to tag the other players rather than sitting in front of a screen. This is a more active rainy day activity, and SOOO fun expecially if you and your group get competitive.

You can combine a game with the arcade while you’re there. It’s central enough to fit around other plans in town, but normally closes on Mondays and has different holiday hours.

Find a Hobart Café Worth Settling Into

Coffee, something delicious to eat, and a table where you can sit for a while and ideally watch the rain come down… I’m very happy to call that a rainy-day activity. In fact, it’s one of my favorites!

These Hobart cafés give you a few different options, from a bookshop afternoon to a proper brunch or a bakery stop in Battery Point.

Jackman & McRoss

Jackman & McRoss on Hampden Road in Battery Point is a bakery and café with bread, pastries, truly unique and delicious combinations of baked goods, and plenty to choose from for a coffee stop or for lunch.

It fits well with exploring Salamanca and Battery Point between showers. Have a look at the cabinet before ordering… choosing something savory doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t also need a pastry, and that is a rule to live by if you ask me.

Fullers Bookshop and the Afterword Café

Fullers Bookshop on Collins Street has its own café, so you can browse for a book and start reading it without heading back outside.

The Afterword Café serves sandwiches, sweet treats, and hot drinks, including a spiced hot chocolate with cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and chili. That sounds particularly good when you’ve just come in from the cold!!

Pigeon Hole Café

Pigeon Hole on Goulburn Street in West Hobart serves breakfast and lunch using seasonal produce from a local farm! You can imagine how fresh everything tastes here. There are farm preserves and other products to browse too, so you might leave with something for later – a solid souvenir if you ask me.

Even the café’s wooden chairs were handmade by a Tasmanian craftsperson, which is a lovely detail. Come for brunch and a slow coffee rather than saving it for late afternoon; it closes at 3pm.

Read a Book or Catch Up on Your Travel Journal

If you’ve found a café you like, bring out your journal and catch up on the little details from your trip – thoughts, downloads, and small details that tend to disappear from your mind the soonest, in my experience: the name of a great bakery, a funny conversation, somewhere you stopped unexpectedly, or a recommendation you were absolutely sure you’d remember.

You don’t have to write pages about every day. A few notes, restaurant names, little sketches, and tickets stuck into a notebook can be just as useful and even joyful to look back on. It can be part journal and part scrapbook, with everything messily added as you go.

Or just read your book. Fullers makes that particularly easy, although buying another one before finishing the one in your bag is a separate issue.

Eat Something That Tastes Better When It’s Raining

A cold, rainy day makes a big bowl of ramen or a hot pie sound even better than usual. If the weather has already slowed your plans down, you might as well make time for a proper (hot) lunch.

Have Ramen at Bar Wa Izakaya

Bar Wa Izakaya on Elizabeth Street is a Japanese-style bar and restaurant serving sharing plates, sake, cocktails, and lunchtime ramen made with house-made stocks.

Ramen is served from noon to 3pm, so make this a lunch stop if that’s what you’re going for… but they also have oyster happy hour from 4pm so you migh as well stay. It’s a pretty cool hidden gem vibe, too.

There’s still plenty to eat later in the day, and an upstairs lounge where you can sit with a drink by the fire. You could easily stay for a while if the weather’s particularly miserable.

Get a Hot Pie at Jackman & McRoss

Back at Jackman & McRoss, the bakery menu includes beef pies and bread-and-butter pudding, both of which sound ideal on a rainy and probably chilly day.

Keep this in mind for lunch when you’re around Battery Point, particularly if you want something filling without a long restaurant meal. It’s also an easy way to combine your bakery browse and lunch into one stop.

Try a Tasmanian Whisky Tasting

If you’re curious about Tasmanian whisky, or just keen for a local drink, LARK’s Hobart cellar door on Davey Street offers guided tastings where you can learn about the distillery while trying its single malts. I stumbled upon this place while exploring the waterfront, and it was honstly one of the highlights of my trip.

The Welcome to LARK experience lasts around 45 minutes and includes three whiskies, with a passionate host explaining what you’re tasting and how they’re made. You don’t need to arrive already knowing all the terminology – you’ll learn a lot (and maybe end up a tiny bit buzzed as well lol).

The cellar door is central, so it’s easy to combine with the waterfront museums. Book through the available session calendar; tours of LARK’s production distillery at Pontville are a separate outing.

See a Show or Tour the Theatre Royal

Have a look at the Theatre Royal’s program if you’re after something to do on a rainy evening. The historic theatre hosts drama, music, dance, comedy, and other performances, so what you see will depend on when you’re in Hobart.

You can also join a behind-the-scenes tour to hear about the building and the performers who have appeared there. The tours take around 75 minutes and currently run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. If you can. book this one ahead. It’s a working theater, so tours fit around rehearsals and performances!

---

For an easy rainy day in Hobart, keep the waterfront museums and Salamanca together, or spend a slower afternoon around Fullers and the city center. Give MONA a larger chunk of the day on its own.

And if you only manage a late breakfast, a few chapters of a book, and a really good lunch, I wouldn’t be too upset about that either.

More on my blog:

• Best Places to visit in Tasmania in summer
• Things to do on a rainy day in Melbourne