Bokhara2

Mille Grazie, Tony.

stpetereb

Hi, we are from Florida and visited NZ and Australia in Oct.-Nov. Our trip was wonderful and I strongly advise you to go to Melbourne. We loved it. We stayed at the Crown Towers, it is the most fabulous hotel it has fabulous stores and a casino right in the building . One of our favorite things on the vacation was Philip Island and the penguin parade which is only a few hours away and the Great Ocean Road starts there. We had three very full days and wished we had longer. While we loved Sydney and would not have missed it for the world but we were so glad we had included Melbourne, it was so special. The weather was perfect, the people charming and it was just great.

tony8028

stpetereb thanks for adding some genuine perspective on the topic !

Unfortunately there is a long held, bitter rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, so if you ask a Sydney-ite about Melbourne all you will hear is ingrained rhetoric about how boring Melbourne is. The first thing they knock is the weather although the worlds great cities (NY, Paris, London etc) get a lot colder than it ever does in Melbourne.

So the only way to get a balanced opinion on this topic is to exlude people from Melbourne and Sydney!

I have lived in both and my opinion is that you really need to live in Melbourne for an extended time to really "get it" whereas in Sydney you only need to drive past the Sydney Harbor Bridge to feel like you are in Australia.

So to live in, I far prefer Melbourne, but for a short trip to Australia, maybe Sydney is the better choice.

If you want the real Australia, stop of in Darwin and try to get to Kakadu or a trip down the Adelaide River where the saltwater crocs jump out of the water to be fed!

Neil_Oz

To live in, I'd probably opt for Melbourne unless I had a lazy couple of million lying around allowing me to live near Sydney's harbour or northern beaches (despite the latter's lousy public transport).

The vast majority of Sydney's people live nowhere near these areas, and in fact the demographic centre of greater Sydney is now a good 20 km west of the coast. But that's OK from a the viewpoint of a visitor, who'll only glimpse the great sprawl of the western suburbs on a day tour to the Blue Mountains, if at all. After all, you don't visit NYC to see Queens.

I do think that the rivalry tony mentions exists much more in the minds of Melburnians than Sydneysiders, who generally don't think of Melbourne, or indeed anywhere else in Australia, as a rival. Actually they seldom think about Melbourne at all. Call it insularity, or arrogance, but that's the way it is.

ivenotbeeneverywhere

Everyone please take out your pens and note on the calendar that today was nicer, CLIMATE WISE in Melbourne than in Sydney - it won't happen again for another few hundred years!

Susan7

I'm with Tony on Cafe e Cucina, it's also great for lunch, amazing pasta, there's also great coffee at Pelligrini's in Bourke St and Brunetti's Faraday st, Carlton--fab cakes also.

I disagree about Sydney coffee, I'd no more direct someone to Gloria Jeans than that brown swill served at Starbucks, I'd recomend Bar Coluzzi (Darlinghurst), Bar Italia (Leichhardt).

lavandula

I would also advise factoring in a trip to Melbourne, if for no other reason than to see the diversity of Australian cities - if you just visit Sydney, you don't appreciate how different other urban areas in Australia can be, and Sydney and Melbourne are really totally different (each is good for different reasons).

Lavandula

Neil_Oz

Even if they didn't serve mediocre coffee I'd stay clear of Starbucks and Gloria Jean's because I loathe their McDonalds style serve-yourself, paper-mug approach - and their prices offer no concession to this indignity. In any Australian city you can get decent coffee served in real cups with table service, even if you may have to order at the counter, and pay no more than these crummy chains.

Neil_Oz

And the fact that Starbucks has closed most of its Australian outlets suggests that they couldn't handle the competition from independent cafes. All of Canberra's Starbucks outlets disappeared practically overnight.

pat_woolford

Neil, perhaps the northern beaches of Sydney's "lousy transport" could have been relieved some 25 years or so ago if the citizens of Avalon and Palm Beach hadn't created an enormous and successful environmental scare which halted the widening of the Bilgola bends, just north of Newport. What they forgot to take into account is the enormous burgeoning of population and weekend daytripper traffic, a total bottleneck of traffic on a 2 lane winding road (one lane each way) merging into a tiny roundabout at the top of the hill before Avalon.

Still the best part of Sydney as far as I'm concerned though.

Bokhara2

Hope you've plenty of ink in your pen, ivenotbeeneverywhere I've been in & around Melbourne since 22nd Dec and the weather has been glorious the whole time. Sunny, mid - high 20s. Today, I'm in Cowes - not a cloud in the sky & about 20c.

The Penguin parade last night was magic; in small and large groups, these little birds emerged from the sea, marched resolutely up the beach to their burrows. Very social, lots of chattering and not at all disturbed by all the people watching them from the boardwalk, as they went about feeding their chicks, nattering with their neighbours. They reminded me of a bunch of Masons going to Lodge on a Friday night

ivenotbeeneverywhere

Those devious little devils - the penguins - who would have thought that they had secret handshakes. Obviously its gone to their heads since " March of the Penguins". Glad that you are having a nice time and the weather is good. Today is supposed to be HOT and nasty but then again - there is always tomorrow.

Bokhara2

The penguins were SO gorgeous. Have you seen them? I was trying to hang around down here long enough for the wet weather to leave Sydney but looks as if I'll be heading into it tomorrow. Ah well, can't be greedy.

ivenotbeeneverywhere

The weather in Tasmania right now is SPECTACULAR so why would you want to head back to the BIG "cough, splutter, croak" smoke? Aside from the weather here in Tassie, its the Taste of Tasmania festival down at the docks in Hobart with food and wines and busking and merriment and let me tell you that this is the place to BE! Yes I have seen the penguins both in Australia and in the Antarctic where there are Armies of these little Masons. They are my most favourite little people in the World, even if they do tend to smell a bit.