First Week in Melbourne

So I’ve been in Melbourne for a week now. I absolutely love it!!

The city reminds me of a mixture of Boston, Asheville, and Europe. There are a lot of buildings from the Victorian era when a lot of money first came to Melbourne during the Victorian Gold Rush. They are mixed in with a lot of really modern looking buildings in all shapes and sizes. It is actually the State of Design festival this week and there are a lot of buildings open this weekend for special tours about the architecture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne

There are a lot of open spaces and parks throughout the city that break up the busy city streets. The tram and bus system is very accessible and runs almost everywhere you could want to go. There are a fair number of bicycle lanes and bike paths throughout the city but they don’t appear to be very popular at the moment. That may be because it is winter here and a bit on the chilly side.

The first day I was here, I went through some sticker shock because the prices of a lot of things are pretty high. Now that I have had a chance to explore the city a little more, I have a better sense of where to find reasonably priced things. The Queen Victoria Market, a huge open-air market about a five-minute walk from my apartment, has practically everything you could possibly want from shoes and clothing to crafts and jewelry and a huge amount of fresh fruit and veggies. There is also a portion that is a fish and meat market and a section with delicatessens where you can find cheeses, bread, honey, wine and many other things.

There are a number of grocery stores in the area (a Woolworths, a Safeway, and an Aldi) for things like pasta, yoghurt, and cereal and I am still not quite sure which one is the best. There is also a Big W, which is kind of like a Wal-Mart, and a Target. Target here is a bit different than the ones at home. Here they are much more like a department store and they don’t have sections with office supplies or snacks and their health and beauty department is very limited.

I have also figured out some places to go for a cheap lunch or dinner out.

I have spent at least a portion of every day wandering through the city and figuring out where things are. There are a lot of specialized shopping districts around town. I think that it is a bit funny to walk down a street and come across like four outdoor sports shops and then on the next block you find a collection of shoe shops or vintage clothing stores. There is a Chinatown, a Greek district and an Italian district that I have explored a little bit so far that all have delicious restaurants mixed in with a variety of other shops. I think that starting classes will be a good thing because otherwise I might be tempted to look at all of the amazing shops all day and spend a bunch of money on things that I don't even need.

There is a lot of street art and many sculpture installations around the city. Some of the smaller laneways have been adopted as ever-changing galleries of elaborate graffiti. The Arts precinct surrounding the Yarra river is home to the many museums from Film and Visual Art to Immigration. The Ballet, Symphony, and many Theatre companies also make their home in this area. The new Melbourne Recital Centre opened just this February and is supposed to have some of the best acoustics in the world. Needless to say, I am very excited to see some performances there this year.