Melbourne

Melbourne reveals itself through its laneways, narrow passages covered in murals with tiny cafés opening off them. Coffee is taken very seriously here, and brunch is close to an institution. Sport fills the other half of life: a hundred thousand people fit inside the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and the whole city follows Australian rules football. Under the yellow facade of Flinders Street Station, the clocks have been the city's meeting point for more than a century. The National Gallery of Victoria has a stained-glass ceiling that visitors study lying flat on the floor, and the great botanic gardens roll down in lawns to the river. The bay is never far: the painted wooden huts of the Brighton Bathing Boxes, the palms and skaters of St Kilda Beach. Under the sheds of the Queen Victoria Market, stalls have been piled with cheese, fruit and fish since the 1870s. The gold rush of the 1850s paid for its iron and glass arcades.