[a very long weekend]

the architecture in melbourne is a lot better. vivid, varied and eclectic, a stark contrast with that feeling of impending doom you get when you spend any time looking at vancouver's archi-monolingual skyline. also, it feels older, more substantial.

also, melbourne is an exciting place to be, not as many chain restaurants, everything is open much later, and in the bustle it feels a lot more like london that it does like vancouver.

the point on the suburbs is sort of right. but in melbourne, they distinguish between outer suburbs and inner suburbs. an inner suburb of melbourne is what people in vancouver just call vancouver. ie. the suburban single family home neighborhoods that make up most of the city. most of these suburbs in melbourne, feel like denser versions of a quasi-urban area such as strathcona in vancouver.

toderian is 100% right though that the outer suburbs of melbourne are garbage (think maple ridge and surrey) and the vancouver ones (burnaby, new westminster) are better.

for people who've never been to australia, it's very eye-opening. i was showing my australian friend around san francisco and he was politely impressed with this and that. it was only when he was showing me around melbourne that i got why SF struck him as relatively mediocre. melbourne far less car-dominated than SF (or vancouver) and cleaner, but it's also just so vibrant and walkable. there's no place in north america even to compare it to you really have to just say london, or maybe some german city.