Melbourne doesn’t seem to have as many pubs as Sydney, which is surprising – popular folklore (at least that which I have heard) has it that the nightlife scene and pub music scene in Melbourne is much better than Sydney.
These results are based on an informal walking tour of a reasonable section of Melbourne city on Tuesday night, as I was after a dinner and a beer. My requirements were relatively simple, yet a little restrictive (as I found out).
I wanted somewhere that had food that wasn’t terribly expensive, a beer that I liked, and had lighting sufficient for me to read a book. The last bit was the kicker – I was in Melbourne by myself, I was sick with a nasty cold, I was a little lonely and bored, so really wanted to read my book over dinner (Quicksilver, by Neal Stevenson, which is a good read). This ended up ruling out about half of the places I found, as they were kind of dark and dingy.
Unfortunately, half of not very many is not a lot. Sydney feels like it has a pub once every couple of blocks, and they’re relatively big – Melbourne seems to have far fewer, and far smaller places.
Eventually I found somewhere. It took some time though.
Bah.
