Melbourne (Part 1)

We have just returned from a one week trip to Melbourne, the first time either of us have been there.  We had really high expectations of Melbourne before going as everyone told us that we would really love the city with its great culture and dining, and its uniqueness from any other major Australian city.  Melbourne is Australia's second largest city with a population of about 4 million people.  It was the first capital city of Australia and is the capital of the state of Victoria.  It is the home of the annual Australian Open Tennis tournament, a Formula 1 car race, and numerous other sporting and cultural events.  To the north and south are world class wine regions (Yarra Valley and Morningside Peninsula), and to the west is the iconic Great Ocean Road.

Clock Tower at the Flinders Street Train Station

Our thoughts are Melbourne really does have a different, more "European" feel than the other Australian cities that we have visited.  It is a very walkable city and has the most amazing art gallery that we have seen outside of Europe (the National Gallery of Victoria, International).  The food scene is incredibly rich and diverse and there is a real appreciation for both atmosphere and service in restaurants.  It took us a couple of days to get ourselves sorted out while finding our way through all the laneways.  After a week, the one thing that we were sure of is that we were lucky if we even found 1% of the laneways and there was no way that we could cover off a sample of every major restaurant type in a week.  Chinatown in massive, as is the long Little Italy, Melbourne is home to the largest urban Greek population outside of Athens, and there are culinary representations for practically every other European, Asian, South American and North American restaurant you can think of (although no Canadian restaurants we found...these people are missing out on the magic that is Bison...maybe we'll give up our day jobs and move there to open a Canadian Bistro...or maybe not!)

St. Patrick's Cathedral and a very wide street

Melbourne has a very user-friendly grid system for the streets, and very wide streets with two lanes of traffic and two tram lines running down the middle of most major streets in the CBD.  We learned that the Melbourne city planners wanted to ensure that no citizen would be more than a 15 minute walk from a park (hence the many large and wonderful parks) and all streets should be wide enough for a carriage to execute a U turn without unhitching the horses.  This led to the very wide streets and, possibly, to a very quirky driving law.  When driving on a CBD street (or possibly any street) in order to make a turn across traffic, the driver pulls into the outside lane, waits for all of the traffic on the inside lane and oncoming traffic to clear, and then turns.  It is sort of like going around an invisible round-about, but more confusing.  Good thing we were only walking!