Melbourne in three days

Day 1 - adjust to new location, suss out the transport and other necessities, visit key sights - made difficult by it being Australia Daybut nice of them to lay on a parade to welcome me.

Day 2 - Enough city already. Escape to St Kilda and the seaside

Day 3 - Explore laneways (trendy little shops and cafes. and visit sights not possible because of Australia day closures

Best bits: St Kilda, Ian Potter gallery with Austalian art of all sorts, fish lunch at Sea Salt caff in the lanes

That's it - done

Three days in Melbourne will be enough said my friend Sarah as she invited me to come to visit nearby Ballarat. She was right. After Sydney’s mellow charms - a ferry a day keeps the city across the bay - Melbourne was noisy, brash and charming in the way of an older teenager who can be ugly and rude one minute, beautiful and mature the next. On the downside they are putting up new buildings, especially in Docklands, which may individually have architectural merit but without thought to landscape so that you end up with a not very harmonious whole. On the upside, some of the Victorian buildings are fabulous excesses of a wealthy period when Melbourne rivalled Sydney as the colonial capital, a prize withdrawn and still resented by Melburnians. Then there is a huge amount of green space, there is St Kilda (more on that) and there is a fabulous welcome for visitors: a free tram and shuttle bus service was all the transport I needed except for St Kilda, and I could have been tempted by the Boris bikes if I’d been there any longer. They’ve been less popular than might have been because of the strict helmet law – you can now get a helmet for $5 from 7 11 shops and station vending machines. The tram company and tourist information both had people dotted around the city centre to pounce helpfully if you even opened a map.