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| Royal Arcade, Melbourne, Australia. Taken by myself with a Canon 10D and 17-40mm f/4L lens. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Melbourne CBD (Central Business District) has something called the Hoddle Grid. Is that a type of grid system that many cities use, or is it specific to Melbourne?
People have told me that Melbourne's grid-organized, and because of this, it's easy to get around. I like that. Part of Manhattan is like that. It's easy to find places if you know in which order the left to right avenues go. For example, we lived on Madison Avenue between 27th and 28th street. So to find it, you'd just need to know that Madison Avenue is between Park and 5th.
Okay, this is sad. I had to actually go look that up. I forgot the order of the avenues. Yikes!
Lord Wiki says that Hoddle's specific to Melbourne. It's a grid system named after Robert Hoddle. He designed the thing in 1837, which is only two years after the area got the white settlers.
The city center has arcades and lanes. That sounds cute. I guess they're little streets?
Yeah. Lord Wiki has a list of all the arcades and lanes in Melbourne, and photos. They remind me of Chinatown in New York. Oh, and we saw some stuff like that in Italy....Paris too, probably.
It looks like some of the arcades are indoors. I prefer the outdoor ones....at least in appearance. If it's raining or hot, I'd probably like the indoor ones.
One of the famous arcades is the Royal Arcade. Here's their website. They say on their history page that it was opened in 1870.
Lord Wiki says that Melbourne has less building height restrictions, and therefore has five of the six tallest buildings in Australia. Wow. Does Sydney have the other one? Or wasn't there a really tall building in the Gold Coast?
Yep. Lord Wiki confirms that. And this Gold Coast building's actually the tallest one of all. Not only that, but it's the tallest residential building in the world.
The second tallest building in Australia is the Eureka building in Melbourne. They have a sky deck for tourists who want a good bird's eye view of the city. I don't. Stuff like that rarely appeals to me. To me, most big cities look alike. And they REALLY look alike from above. But if my traveling companions want to go, I'm happy to be dragged along.
There are lots of gardens and parks in Melbourne. That's good. I like parks.
Lord Wiki talks a bit about housing. It seems getting a home is fairly difficult. Demand's exceeding supply. I remember reading about that awhile back. Australia has a thing about everyone having a house, but now it's a bit expensive to achieve that.
