Good cafes and restaurants – living in Knox spoilt me as much as going to school in the city. It may not seem like much, but the quality and number of cafes & restaurants in Melbourne is far and above what is here in Sydney. Maybe I just live in the wrong place, but there is a glaring lack of anything that passes for a restaurant of the quality I was used to in Melbourne. They’re cheaper, sure, but there’s a depressing lack of choice (Italian or Chinese is pretty much the whole list within 20 min of my place). Monday night the streets were dead and so were the restaurants. So what I want to know is: where are the people? Surely they can’t all be home on this gorgeous a night. Plus the number of cars parked by the side of the road indicates the people are somewhere around after all the other shops have closed; they just don’t happen to be on the streets.
Friday night late shopping – it’s only Thursday nights up here. And if you happen to be busy Thursday, the weekend is the only chance (after of course you’ve done the washing and cleaning up and had your lazy sleep in morning and visited a friend…). Plus, much like Monday night, once the shops are closed, it turns into a ghost town. Unless you’re in the city – in which case it’s pretty much a ghost town where the main pubs and bars are not packed with corporate clones finishing the week. Maybe it’s just a ghost town in comparison to the hectic day.
Trams – what with trams would be a 5 minute hop across the city turns into a 15 min hike. Complain as you like about the trams service being crap and slow, it sure beats walking in 30 degree heat through thousands of others on their lunch break. I will go on the record as saying I do not miss the trains, no matter how much complaint locals are making about the new timetable.
Knowing the place – This is something that just takes time, but in Melbourne it’s very quick & easy to orient yourself – there’s only so many streets in the CBD. Here, I discover a new alley, street or shortcut-arcade daily. Plus it makes recommending places & giving routes nigh on impossible. Don’t know any of the good bars or clubs or whatnot.
Straightforward streets – related to knowing the place is having straightforward streets. You look at a map of Melbourne, and nearly everywhere you have this nice giant grid to navigate through. You look at a map here and see multiple spaghetti strands leading everywhere. It’s probably more “real world”, but you cannot drive on autopilot here. Satnav is a good idea here.
Friends within 10 min – In Melbourne I had a compact set of friends (both a good and bad thing). Here, it takes me at least 5 minutes to get out of my own suburb (fiendish roundabouts and unnecessarily twisty roads), and my closest friend lives at least 20 min away (excluding family friends). I don’t mind the drive, but it’s a psychological thing – “Gonna take me at least 25 min to get there…”
The Big TV – how on earth do you watch TV on this tiny little thing? And half the screen is missing when I’m watching a movie! Let alone the fact that the sound is coming out of a single tiny mono speaker.
Family – Gee, you weren’t expecting this one were you? Miss getting home and just chewing the fat for an hour or so. Miss the regularity of Mum’s cooking. Other than that really it’s not so bad because this place feels like home – it’s always felt like home, near instantly.
Cold Water out of the tap – Sydney’s water isn’t really cold out of the tap, when clearly it needs to be. It’s just kinda cold. Melbourne’s water is proper cold coming out of the tap.
In Syd, it seemed to me as thought there was a ‘correct’ way to drive. Even where there’s a grid, there’ll be a set route for high-volume through-traffic. Your not going to have arguments over the route. They even closed off roads that competed with the tollways. In Melbourne, thanks to the grid, you’ve a plathora of potential routes- one might be better than another, but you’re highly unlikely to ever know.
But it’s a mystery to me how you know what the set route is in Syd… glad to have never driven there.
Not to mention the crazy drivers there. Then again, there are lots of stupid morons here too…
At least he misses Melbourne ;)
Daniel: here it’s route numbers. They encircle and web the city, so you have to find the one that’s roughly heading to your direction. Basically, in Melbourne you can find directions based on compass points – if it’s South-East, head east for a bit until you find a major road heading south. Keep correcting until you’re there. Sydney, you need a street directory without a doubt.
Z: yeah they’re a little more on-edge here, but they’re also more forgiving (getting way is so much easier). Plus they all drive at least 5kmh over the limit since the police aren’t as strict about those things.
And I never said I missed Melbourne, merely some aspects of it :P