Melbourne! Hell yeah!

As I said before, I went to Melbourne for a four-day trip over the past weekend, and I've decided that it may very well be deserving of the tag of "11th-best city in the world" that Lonely Planet gave it in the giant Cities book I have. That makes it better than... well, everywhere besides NYC, London, Paris, Sydney, Barcelona, Bangkok, Istanbul, Rome, Cape Town and San Francisco. Pretty lofty claim, that. Still, it is a very cool city, with an awful lot going on. Yes, my ancient and somewhat irrational Melbourne-and-Victoria-hate has finally disintegrated utterly. Please don't banish me, beloved South Australia!

Without writing a boring I-did-this-and-then-I-did-this post, over three days (since I didn't get there until Friday evening) I packed in the following: hippie market at St Andrews, Healesville Sanctuary, Chinese restaurant, karaoke, bars, brunch at Nicola's lovely cafe, trash market at Camberwell, city shopping, local rock festival (as in, loud music, not geology), Bridge Road shopping, exhibition of political cartoons, pub trivia (second place, by one point! Alas!). A busy trip, then.

As an aside, one of the ongoing games of Aimee and myself was the invention of names for potential bands. Amongst my better ideas (better, according to me, that is):
Help Help I'm On Fire
The Habits
Department Of Unclaimed Umbrellas
Informative Billboards
Platonic Lesbians
Southern Crustaceans
My favourite, however, is still simply Ducks. I'd love the idea of a band going onstage to announce, "we are Ducks!" Adorable.

Meanwhile, one of the great things about Melbourne are its neighbourhoods of inner-city stuff; Collingwood, Richmond, Fitzroy et al. Those places that are still busy and funky and full of shops and eating and stuff, where people actually live. The city of Melbourne itself (and Sydney, for that matter) doesn't feel that much bigger than Adelaide, just busier - but it's that inner-city-living feeling that Adelaide really has very little of that I like. That, and its noticeable leap up in terms of diversity. Of course, more Cool Stuff and a bigger, more diverse population inevitably results in more self-important tools. And honestly, given the choice between Harmless But Narrow-Worldview Bogans and Self-Important Trend-obssessed Tools, I might actually go for the HBNWBs.
But that's a minor gripe. Melbourne! Go there!