Melbourne Ups and Downs

Back home again after an exhilarating yet exhausting week.  I would normally have written on the way home at some point, but it was a quick and harried journey.  I have been to Melbourne several times before… on my way to go to Hobart via the old Abel Tasman, on my way to a cruise ship to go around New Zealand, on my way to visit a friend in Ocean Grove, and on my way to the Great Ocean Road.  So it has always been a bit of a ‘stay one night and jump off to somewhere else’ destination.  Which meant the jury was pretty much still out as to whether or not I actually liked the place.

Things I Liked About Melbourne:
There’s a pub on nearly every corner
Very strong visual arts culture
Cool blend of old and modern architecture
Clean beaches so close to the city
Awesome restaurants absolutely everywhere
Friendly hospitality staff
St. Kilda and Acland St. rocks
Queen Victoria Market’s delis, say no more
Live music nearby every night
Funky urban photo ops all over the place
Older suburbs have gorgeous quaint townhouse rows
Civic art that doesn’t look like it’s trying too hard
Awesome second hand bookshops
Shopping centres have discovered Dyson AirBlades
Fairly flat and easy to walk around (where I stayed anyway)
Lots of totally cool and creative graffiti

Things I Did Not Like About Melbourne:
There’s a pub on nearly every corner
SMOKING in al fresco cafes and restaurants!
Smoking outside shops and in public thoroughfares!
The trams were on my fucking road
Grumpy or completely ambivalent retail staff
Traffic sucks almost as bad as Brisbane
Bogans – lots of bogans
Needs more free wi-fi (but most of Aust does)
Nothing seems to open until 10am… what’s with that?
The overhead tramlines are unsightly
Heaps of hippie swamp rat types everywhere
Iconic places not signposted – like the Brighton Beach bathing boxes
The water at the beach was too cold for swimming in mid-summer!
Too many passed out drunks to step over by midday
Most public toilets needed attention/upgrading (not Turkey bad, but still)
Tap water needs more chlorine or fluoride or something; tastes terrible
There was a decided lack of bacon in my visit…
Lots of totally crappy eyesore graffiti

Overall, I really enjoyed Melbourne this trip.  The ANZAMEMS conference was awesome and, much like a geek going to Supernova or something, I felt like these were ‘my people’.  The panels were fantastic, but it was impossible to attend all the lectures I wanted to see, and it was full of intellectually engaging people discussing their unique and unusual work and ideas, and using LOTS of big words!  (it’s the little things)

Staying in St Kilda was a great plan – the area has a fantastic feel to it… a bit like Byron Bay crossed with Fortitude Valley or New Farm.  Plenty of cafes, bars and restaurants, funky shopping, live entertainment, markets, quaint little back streets and all a stones throw from the Esplanade and the beach.  It was also a decent proximity from Monash and the city, not too far out and not so close as to be the ‘aargh, I’m in the middle of the noisy dirty city’ bit, found in large cities the world over.  The only thing I didn’t really ‘get’ about St. Kilda were all the patisseries on Acland Street… it seemed about one in every four shops was another chocolatier, bakery or cake store and either the people around those parts are totally in for the adult onset type II diabetes or half of these shops would be out of business!  I’m not really a sweet tooth and stayed a week in the area and tried only half of one vanilla slice thingy and none of the fancy chocolates, so the Acland Street CakeWalk was totally wasted on me.

All up I reckon I could live in Melbourne… on that side of town anyway.