Which is better Melbourne or Sydney? "Sydney is busier, Sydney has a few more things to see, and Melbourne is a bit more artistic. Melbourne has four seasons in a day and has more coffee shops, Sydney has more pubs" etc etc. This is just a few things that I have heard from the 'travel experts'. All of the general analytical things that are said about the contrasting styles of both cities are indeed correct in my opinion, and I can't really say anything different. In the grand scheme of things though, who cares? They have there own styles and are both very nice cities in there own way. The Australian City that has been the focus of all attention over the past week or so has been Brisbane. A large portion of Queensland in fact, battered by the brutal force of Mother nature. Maybe it is because Brisbane was the first place that I visited in Australia, and the first place I visited outside of Europe, but I have a soft spot for Queensland, and Queenslanders themselves. The place is held in high regard close to my heart, and I have yet to meet anyone friendlier in Australia than Queenslanders, and my heart goes out to those that have being affected by the devastation of these floods. I met a retired Aussie on my flight from Singapore to Brisbane, and I thought I had better ring him to see if he was ok. He thanked me for ringing and said he was fine, and how if ever I needed anything in Australia, I were to give him a ring and he'd only happily try and help me. A kind typical Queenslander eh? To quote someone from the media at the time the devastation of the floods hit, "Queensland is not just a City anymore, it's a family". As everyone keeps saying 'made of stern stuff are those Queenslanders. I can definitely see a resemblance between them and the people from the great Republic of Yorkshire.

Now onto Melbourne.....I arrived at Tullamarine (the main airport in Melbourne) and it was certainly colder than Sydney straight away. The taxi driver from the airport was a British gentleman who had lived in Melbourne for over 30 years and he told me how I would take a shine to this city. He wasn't wrong. I was to enjoy it, but I'm not one of those individuals that seem to be able to tell someone which City I prefer over a different city. I just seem to try and appreciate the good from everywhere and spot the not so good of them all. It is another nice city in Australia but I would have to toss a coin really to decide if I preferred Melbourne over Sydney or vice versa. I would probably say Melbourne just hedges it for me due to it being one of the capital sporting cities of the World. So many people seem to say Melbourne is similar to a European City. I know one thing, I wouldn't see horse and carriages regularly going down the tram lanes in Sydney, or Leeds/Wakefield/Bradford/Huddersfield to name a few places. It was a bit of a strange sight when I first saw them.

I stayed in a beautiful hostel on Victoria parade, east of the CBD. It was that good that I will even give it a mention here. (I plan on telling the receptionist that I have mentioned the hostel in this blog, and will then plead for a free night stay...joke... honest). The hostel is calledHome@Mansionand I now feel which ever the next hostel I stay in next, I will probably be disappointed due to the high standards that were kept continuously throughout this hostel. It was also practically right outside a tram stop where the free city circle tram passed every 15minutes. This was a Godsend, especially on the days when it decided to tipple it down. They say that was the only free tram in the city, but I did wonder if anyone pays on any of the others trams as I never saw anyone ever come round on any of them during my stay.

Back to the topic of Mother nature now I'm afraid. Trust me to go inside some of the museums that Melbourne has to offer on days when it was sunny, especially as the day after, all throughout the working week in fact, it would just continuously rain. I just never thought that with me visiting Australia in summer time, I would have had to keep checking the daily weather forecasts and plan my days in accordance to the sun and rain. Basically I was in a strategic battle against the Aussie weather. I couldn't understand why people were going home though and throwing the towel in (no pun intended), due to the wet conditions. IMO, life is about dealing and adapting to everything thrown at you, and you just have to make the most of every situation you find yourself in. Some people I know saved up flights for years and just went home due to them being sick of the rain. Did they expect Britain to be bathed in a tropical heat wave in the middle of January?

As for things to do in Melbourne, admittedly there doesn't seem to be as many top attractions and must see sights as there is in Sydney (unless your a devoted sports fan), but as a city I can see why it got voted as one of the 'top Cities in the World to live in'. Great transport network for a start. There are some beautiful parks, but unfortunately I didn't have the luxury to walk through them in all its glory throughout my entire stay in Melbourne. Museum such as the Imax, Anz banking museum and the immigration museum were all nice to look inside. I got away with my out of date student card which entitled me to free admission into the immigration museum. Call it karma, call it what you want, but 10 minutes into my look around the immigration museum, the whole area had a power failure. I enjoyed my 10 minute look around the building nevertheless.

St Kilda was the nearest beach resort, and we took the short tram (which we pay nothing for) and visited this area of the city one Friday night. We saw the penguins, and that was it really. A lot of travellers stay in this area, but for me personally, I would prefer to be in the city, than near the beach area, and getting the tram everyday to visit.

ALL ABOUT SPORT IS THE NEXT TWO BIG PARAGRAPHS - The city itself was a sporting metropolis, so the picture above is kind of fitting that it does show a sporting arena when trying to describe Melbourne in a picture format. I was in awe of the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). It is kind of weird as it so much different to Wembley and the Camp Nou (or Nou Camp), as it an oval pitch, but it still holds such a large capacity. Located inside the stadium down below is the National Sporting Museum, which for people like me (a sports freak), is a complete must. We spent most of the afternoon in there and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is remotely interested in sport. Across the city is another sporting venue in the name of the Etihad Stadium, which is located near the dockside. The outside of it looks extremely impressive and when I look back at the picture I took of it, it looks very much like an artist impressionist drawing. Maybe that is due to how they have designed it, or my fantastic photography skills. There is also Aami Park which is a big stripy black and white dome. I also caught a glimpse of the Melbourne storm players training and preparing for the new season. I ventured to Albert Park, home of the Australian Grand Prix. The walk around the street circuit was kind of surreal as it was just a normal looking road going right around a massive lake. I walked down the pit lane and into the straight to where I had some memorable finishes on the F1 1997 play station game with me (Michael Schumacher) usually coming out on top, and crashing Eddie Irvine into the chicane.

Onto Monday 17th January now, which I would definitely say was a highlight of the whole trip. I had always planned on going to the tennis and came to Melbourne around this time of the year specifically for this. After days of walking around the outside tennis courts in Melbourne Park, and witnessing some extremely high standard games of tennis from the qualifying rounds, this was the day that I would watch my first grand slam tennis event. I had tickets for the main show court for the morning/afternoon session, and was hopeful rather than confident that I would watch someone I really wanted to, ie Federer, Nadal, or Murray. Someone I knew had evening tickets for both monday and tuesday evening, and the afternoon ticket for the Tuesday in the hope he would not miss Roger Federer in action (he didn't have the monday afternoon tickets, and that turned out to be the time Federer was playing ha). The schedule was kind to me, I was about to watch Maria Sharapova, Caroline Wozniacki, and Roger Federer. The Sharapova match was painful to watch (obviously just looking at her wasn't), but the second match involving Caroline Wozniacki (the top women's seed) up against an Argentinian whose name eludes me was a throughley entertaining match. Two whole games in the 2nd set lasted the same time as a whole set in the Federer Match. Lukos lacko, a slovakian lad was Federers opponent and he was quite good, but he came up against a human brick wall. The match didn't last long as he won 6-1, 6-1, 6-3. Even though it was the first round, I was extremely pleased and privileged that I had witnessed the greatest ever tennis player perform some fantastic shots that only a selective handful of players will ever be able to. At one point during the second set, the Japanese tourist near to me who was accompanied throughout with his Iphone, binoculars and hi-tech camera shouted "THIS IS CRAZZYYYY". I got told after by a Federer follower, that he was only going through the motions, and it was very good tennis from him, but not his absolute best. I can't wait to see him up against Rafael Nadal, albeit only on the television.

I am determined to make my next blog actually quite short in comparison to some of the blogs so far. As Sydney and Melbourne are the 2 biggest cities in Australia though and some say the liveliest, I have obviously had a fair bit to write about them both. Onto a smaller place now to continue my travels, and hopefully some of you are still actually awake at this point......... Takecare everyone.