ENROUTE TV   ENROUTE FM   MEDIA KIT   AIR CANADA   LINKS   WRITERS'   GUIDELINES	URBANE LEGEND No longer Australia’s "second city," Melbourne epitomizes unpretentious style. Text: MIREILLE SILCOTT IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO FIGURE OUT THAT THE KIND OF VACATION I ENJOY MOST IS SOMEWHAT OUTMODED. Even my parents sweep off to rural Thailand or the deepest rain forests of Costa Rica for their holidays. But me? I’ve always fancied the sort of urban vacation upwardly mobile Westerners used to take before they caught the fever for the gritty and remote. I like the sort of luggage-set vacations people in 1950s movies took, where finding a hidden café with a funny waiter, then shopping for dresses and gussying up for a nice restaurant was good enough. You could call me unadventurous. To which I would answer: Why do trips always have to be adventurous? Life is adventurous enough. That’s not to say there wasn’t a smidge of adventure in flying to Melbourne to take a city vacation. Australia – a country so big and remote it is also its own continent – is about as far from my hometown of Montreal as one can fly, barring Antarctica. There was something lusciously perverse in the idea of journeying 22 hours and crossing the date line, and doing all this not to experience the rain forests of Queensland, the central expanse of the outback or the cobalt miracle of the Great Barrier Reef. But the craziest part was that I had an urban vacation of canopied sidewalks and nightlife planned in Australia that took place somewhere other than Sydney. Melbourne is a famed event town, hosting both the Grand Prix and the Australian Open. The population is only 600,000 short of Sydney’s 4 million. But the venerable Sydney, Australia’s main business centre, is the town known as Oz’s London or Paris – especially post-2000 Olympics. So I was setting my sights on a "second city," but one which a couple of insiders I trusted assured me had something the flashier, cashier Sydney didn’t have: real style and innate sophistication. I ended up in a lovely hotel called The Prince in St. Kilda, one of Melbourne’s older seaside "suburbs." Melburnians call any area outside their shining business core a suburb rather than a borough or neighbourhood. As I reached St. Kilda – after coasting over a bridge that looked like it was constructed using King Kong-sized, coloured pick-up sticks – cafés grew denser, as did the crowds of lightly clad tanned people sitting outside. "This is nothing," said the young thing at The Prince’s front desk. "Drop off your bags and go up Acland Street now," she urged. "Have breakfast. You’ll see why Melbourne’s so great. We’re a café society!" I walked out thinking, "Who says things like that? ‘We’re a café society’?" Yet she didn’t seem affected in the least. It was my first encounter with a key Melburnian charm: People are at once sophisticated and wholly unpretentious, a combination that you won’t find in many other places. Breakfast was a good idea. When trying to get to know a city on holiday, this lowliest of mealtimes is always a critical signifier. If you go for brekkie at, say, 10 a.m. on a weekday and find cafés teeming, this is a sign of a city where people know how to live. But nothing could have prepared me for Acland Street, a main street in what was once Melbourne’s Jewish ghetto – St. Kilda. On this stretch known for its tightly snuggled cake shops, confections of every shape and frosting were stacked in windows, like something out of a children’s book. Tangles of chairs and tables were arranged all along the street, as were Melburnians of a very employable age – sipping lattes, smoothing down their texturized bedheads and exchanging club flyers in the baking sun. There was not a spare chair to be found. I asked the 11-foot-tall supermodel behind the counter of the heartbreakingly charming Monarch Cake Shop what exactly was going on. It was Monday. Was it a holiday? Who were these people?" "See Sarah over there? She’s an architect," said Counter Girl. "And the guy with the bleached hair next to her? He’s an investment banker!" I asked why they weren’t at work. "Because they are having coffee!" she replied blithely, as if this were the only explanation under the sun. This was the type of befuddling statement I would encounter repeatedly as I tooled around Melbourne’s famously varied suburbs. Melburnians are a population so living-for-now, they will look at you as if you are crazy if you inquire as to how – or why – things got the way they did. In Carlton, Melbourne’s Little Italy, I was stunned by the area’s expensive, restored chicness. "Was this area always so upscale?" I asked a Tuscany-born gentleman, who has been selling gelati from his filigreed and corniced storefront for the past decade. "I don’t know," he boomed. "But it’s nice, no?" I then walked along Victoria Street, otherwise known as Little Saigon, and then to Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, a suburb legendary for its bohemian vegan hangouts. I asked one older dreadhead working at a café called Friends of the Earth why Brunswick is so big with the patchouli set. His answer: "Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah... I guess it is. I don’t know." I then cabbed to Chapel Street in the swishy suburb of South Yarra. This is the street everyone I spoke to said was king for designer shopping. But I found only teenybopper stores selling surf labels like Rip Curl and Quiksilver. These are the sort of Technicolor emporiums one finds everywhere in Oz, where the beach touches all corners of youth culture. I paused for a plate of tender calamari at Caffe e Cucina. I asked a waiter to explain my shopping-related misadventure. "Come to think of it, Little Collins Street is much better for designer clothes," he said, scratching his chin. "Don’t know why people always tell tourists to come here." I made my way back to The Prince hotel. I was a little frustrated at all the missing links. I was also sunburned. Australia sits under one of the biggest holes the ozone layer has. Go outside for even a half-hour unprotected, no matter how olive your complexion, and you’ll come back a tomato head. Frankly, it was quite thrilling to find the hotel as tranquil and fresh as when I left it. Once a seedy Edwardian hooker’s hangout named the Prince of Wales Hotel, The Prince is now a perfect boutique oasis. It sounds like corny brochure-speak, but the rooms are large and serene, the spa is world-class, the restaurant is among the city’s best, and there are no less than three drinking places, a terraced café, a great wine shop and a hot nightclub, all in the same deceptively small and quiet edifice. I settled for a glass of wine in the courtyard – one of Australia’s elegant Pinot Noirs. It was there that I met a Sydney journalist – a strange, squat, leathery man in multicoloured silk cufflinks, visiting Melbourne to cover the Tropfest short film festival. He seemed to know a thing or two, and so I asked him why nobody else seemed to know anything. "Ah! The famed ‘I don’t know!’" he laughed, as if other foreigners had asked him this question before. He had a theory. I’m still not sure if he was joking. "We’ve perfected a cultural amnesia," he said, sipping his wine. "Why?" "Two words: penal colony. Just think about it: Australia doesn’t have a great history, so we’re not so big on analyzing the past. We like to live for the present instead. You know, ‘No worries, mate,’ just get on with it." He saw that my little PC Canadian brain was trying to twist this incredible idea into an acceptable shape. "Don’t dwell on things!" he continued. "You might be as happy a nation as we are. Couldn’t find a happier lot, you know." The next day I decided this cufflinked man was a nutbar. But I still liked him and arranged to meet with him again. In the meantime, I took his advice while discovering Little Collins Street, a wonderfully narrow and fashiony stretch in the middle of Melbourne’s super-modern downtown. I didn’t ask "why" when I uncovered the most unconventional combination establishments this side of the 19th century. I had lunch at Sarti, a haberdashery/restaurant, where tailors, sandwich makers and customers combine in a single open-concept room. I passed a wine bar that offered tarot readings and then a laundromat that doubled as a luxury tanning salon. I ended the day in a plate-glass restaurant called Verge, which turned its little downstairs corridor into an exclusive nightclub at midnight. It hit me that Melbourne is among the nicest walkabout cities – full of surprises and unconventional ways – I have ever been in. There was something about the lack of nagging sights to see, the pleasure of just going along, that equalled urban vacation heaven for me. This became more evident when I would travel to Sydney before returning home. There, I climbed the Harbour Bridge, saw the Opera House and felt like a tourist. In Melbourne, I had done touristy things as well: I gawked at sunbleached surfers on Bell’s Beach; I took a tour of a few refreshingly unsnooty Yarra Valley wineries. But still, after only a couple of days, I felt like I belonged. This is the pleasurable flip side to experiencing the "different," the raison d’être of so many trips nowadays. I discussed this with my friend, the dandy in cufflinks, on my last night in Melbourne. We walked along St. Kilda’s pier, which was curiously unlit. There was only one other thing I wanted explained. "What’s with the Sydney envy?" I asked. He said something about Sydney’s harbour and the Olympics. An unsatisfying response, considering Melbourne’s haberdashery eateries and bleached-haired bankers immersed in "café society." Couldn’t Melburnians see that they have a place wacky and winsome like nowhere else? He thought for a while. And then said, "I don’t know." We walked further into the blue-blackness of the ocean. With newfound spirit, I decided to let sleeping dogmas lie. "I don’t know" was finally enough for me. And I’d brave 22 hours to get to it again anytime. ----- MELBOURNE A simple seaside grid, Melbourne is a paradise of diverse suburbs. Visitors should plan at least one day just to tool around - but don't forget the sunscreen. WHERE TO STAY The Prince An elegant 40-room boutique hotel in the hip, lovely suburb of St. Kilda. The Aurora Spa is one of the best in Melbourne. 2 Acland Street, St. Kilda 61-3-9536-1111 www.theprince.com.au Hotel Lindrum Formerly a snooker and billiards hall, with former plushness elegantly restored to more minimal tastes. Great cigar bar and, of course, billiards room. 26 Flinders Street 61-3-9668-1111 www.hotellindrum.com.au WHERE TO EAT Circa A spare, white block of a room, with a bar and courtyard. The modern European cuisine is light and delightful. Favoured by a trendy media crowd. In The Prince hotel. Donovan’s A comfortable, beachy kind of place on St. Kilda’s glorious bay, with a satisfying grill-heavy menu. Make sure to book in time to catch the gorgeous Aussie sunset. 40 Jacka Boulevard, St. Kilda 61-3-9534-8221 www.donovanshouse.com.au Verge Restaurant and Winebar Modern Australian food, modern decor and built-in nightlife downstairs after you have finished your meal. Chic to the max. 1 Flinders Lane 61-3-9639-9500 Sarti Wonderful panini, with a haberdashery working out of the front of the shop. One of Melbourne’s more unconventional luncheon bars. Right off Little Collins Street. 6 Russell Place 61-3-9639-7822 www.sarti.com.au Caffe e Cucina A prime locale in Melbourne’s "café society," this Italian eatery is equally great for a full-course dinner or just lingering over an espresso, watching the scene. 581 Chapel Street, South Yarra 61-3-9827-4139 WHAT TO DO Little Collins Street Melbourne’s premier shopping strip, with lots of street life and cafés too. Visit the shops of local designers. Bettina Liano (269 Little Collins) and Scanlan & Theodore (277-279 Little Collins) St. Kilda A Victorian seaside suburb. Walk up Acland Street, wander into a cake shop and then make your way over to the pier. The Yarra Valley Epicurean Food and Wine Tours Specializes in personalized tours of this laid-back vineyard district, home of Yering Station wines and Domaine Chandon bubbly. 61-3-9598-0943 www.epicureantours.com.au Melbourne Museum Opened in 2000, this is the largest museum complex in the southern hemisphere. The aboriginal exhibits are fascinating. Melbourne Museum, Carlton Gardens 61-3-8341-7777 www.melbourne.museum.vic.gov.au INFORMATION Australian Tourist Commission 1-800-333-0139 www.australia.com HOW TO GET THERE Air Canada offers daily flights from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia. From Sydney, you can connect with local carriers to Melbourne.
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