Brits Opinion on Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, and Tasmania Compared

welcome back we've just got over the jet lag so about a week after spending two and a little bit weeks in Australia it's a little bit weird trying to work out how much actual time you spent there so even though it was 2 weeks and 2 days you lose 2 days traveling so really it's 2 weeks actually in Australia what we thought we would do as we mentioned before in some previous videos is kind of review whether Australia would be a place we'd want to live but also give a general review of what Australia was like being there especially from two people that never really had the urge to travel there so bizarre never thought of traveling to Australia never wanted to go on holiday there and never actually really considered living there either so Melbourne What's the culture and lifestyle like the first thing that really struck me was just how diverse and Multicultural it is which I really like because growing up in London it's always been quite diverse and it was just really nice to see a city that is like that especially I think for us living day-to-day in Vegas we don't really get that diversity not at the level that Melbourne had and that's then reflected in the food and just the people and it was just really nice when I'm getting in an Uber and talking to people from different backgrounds and I would also say people from different countries that I've never don't normally speak to as well particularly having moved to sumerin Las Vegas Melbourne is very similar to London in terms of diversity I don't think it's the same in terms of the split yeah as in not the spread it might be as diverse but I think the split between black or Asian or or Chinese or whatever it happens to be would be significantly different but that's because it's closer to different countries than the UK but it was actually really nice being part of that again next was noticing the busyness or lack of busyness when you compare it to London to me it didn't really feel that alive in Melbourne it felt quite dead and multiple times we went out for dinner on the trams and public transport around 5:00 and you can easily get on a tra you don't have to fight anyone nobody's arguing or bumping into people Russ and how busy it would be I remember the first day we went out to Port Melbourne to go to the beach and apparently it hadn't been it was the first good good weather good day that week in my head in England when that happens everyone is going to the hot spots and you know you're struggling to get a parking spot beaches are busy but when we got there there was just hardly there was no one there there's nothing going on really so that was a bit surprising which for me is a positive because if you want City Life which you do get in abundance it's a true City fill with one tenth of the people that you would expect obviously as more people go there it's going to build up but it was quite nice for me I actually enjoyed that part of it being a city the other thing I noticed was the architecture in Melbourne it was to me really interesting you had really old Victorian English buildings with the backdrop of super contemporary skycrapers and then stuff in between everything felt like it had its own feel and moment in time which UK or England does have some parts of London are like that but generally if you've got a street of Victorian homes that's what it is yeah don't have this modern building after which Melbourne had and I really enjoyed that something that really struck me with Melbourne was you do have that City life but then you have the beaches and I think in one of the videos I commented on that similarity to San Diego where you'd have that that Hub but you're very close to the very similar much better restaurant and that Vibe so that was really nice lots of people out keeping fit when we were out walking along P Port Melbourne what was also nice about Melbourne as well is you've got the area of the city but you can drive an hour out from Melbourne and you've got the wineries you've got other beaches and I think that was really nice about being in Melbourne next is food in Melbourne and everyone I think in the lead up to going there had told us you are going to love it if you are a foodie Melbourne is the place to go I would agree it did not disappoint in terms of the options of food and also the quality of food so one of the our favorite restaurants there was this Farm to Table food that we Farm's daughter yeah and it was really good it was really nice to just have an abundance of choice but with good quality food at a good price they really really do take food seriously they take their produce seriously and something I really enjoyed throughout Australia actually but in particular Melbourne was you can pay a set fee which was usually around $60 which to us doesn't seem realistic because of us prices it was shockingly cheap in comparison yeah and I think we're going to do a separate video on this but just to mention here I read on a review site like Reddit somebody had posted up Australia is significantly more expensive than the US and Asia and they went on to list out their experience and I believe them but what we found is we bumped into a few people from the Midwest that live in places that are super rural they have 10 acres and they were saying how expensive melbo seemed to us it seems extremely cheap it's at least 25 to 30% cheaper so this again is one of those things where everybody's experience is probably true it depends on where you're coming from here in Las Vegas prices are out of control for food and eating out so for us we're eating out five courses every night for less than just a normal meal at really high-end restaurants as well so I thought it was amazing to be honest the food there the other thing that I was actually very surprised about were the portion sizes so everyone talks about the portion sizes here in America I actually think the portion sizes in Australia were just as large if not bigger one of the other things that was kind of nice even though we spent most of our life living like that we got used to the American system of tipping and although I do agree with tipping to an extent it was really nice not having to do that it's not expect it's nice isn't it the bill is the bill the bill is the bill and you can add something discretionary if you want to but it's really not expected and it just made paying so much easier the one thing they do do which is actually really it's odd in some respects in that we've never come across it before but it's actually quite smart is that there is a standardized search charge at restaurants which apply on weekends and public holidays in general a weekend has a 10% search charge on the bill and it tells you right up front when you enter the restaurant and on the menus if it's the weekend it's a 10% often on a bank holiday or a national holiday it's going to be a 15% sear charge on top of the bill which unusual but kind of makes sense I don't know kind of kind it does and maybe if you're used to I just found that really odd the fact that I had to pay more to eat at a restaurant at a weekend the other thing that was a bit odd in Melbourne and I think actually most places we went to Australia actually was there was an extra chart in the restaurants if you paid with a credit card and this wasn't uncommon in most places even in retail shops sometimes it would be the same but I found that very unusual coming from places where it's very normal to be cashless and pay on card that they charge you an extra fee which leads to the other thing that was a little bit different about eating out in Australia and that was how you paid first of all aunt and I get confused about paying now because we fully adjusted to the American way which is they come with the bill you put your card in they take it away then they come back then you sign it and then there all this magic happens so a long convoluted process for paying in America but we've kind of got used to that in Australia what we found is if you are at a place that I would I guess I would describe it as casual dining definitely casual dining quick service is you would either first of all You' pay at the counter which is fine initially but at the point of ordering at the point point of ordering or if you do order but you pay at the end you would still have to go back to the counter so in some cases we were sat there not knowing do we ask for the bill or do we have to go up but we did find with casual places casual dining you go to the counter now for those more kind of like sit down meals which are longer then they would bring the bill to you with a card machine which is more like what we do in the UK yeah very it is the UK method not that we came up with it but that is what we're used to in the UK what I would say is it makes for a much more efficient dining process so if you're going for lunch which often we'd leave the apartment we'd go downstairs maybe we were dropping you off to work or whatever it was you walk in you order you pay you sit down you get your meal within 5 minutes you eat you leave or you walk in you order you sit down you eat as soon as you finish you walk to the counter which is always on your way out you pay and you leave I would say it's that makes more sense to me it's a way more efficient system than both the UK and the US the US is without a doubt the slowest and I know not every state is the same but at least here in Vegas it's a 74 stage Pro in which you're constantly waiting for something to happen Australia have got rid of all of that there's no waiting you're just in pay out it makees sense because then the the the waiter or waitress isn't waiting on you and having to check are you ready for your bill or if they're busy which they often are here you're waiting for them to get around three tables just to give you your bill so I actually thought that that was a really smart way of doing it your card for them to take it away I'm going to like really milk that point but it's true it's such an inefficient process here in the US onto transport in Melbourne I always get this wrong because I say Melbourne which is apparently the Posh way and there's nothing Posh about me it's Mel Ben so you kind of dropped the O I just think they're mispronouncing the whole thing but I fully come around to how Australians say it fine anyway transport system for me the best it's one of the best Transport Systems because pretty much everywhere you would need to get to in terms of business local beaches shops restaur is available on a tram system the tram system is free within the CBD area which stands for what remind me Central business district and then it's a very small charge if you're going out of that and it's kind of zoned and if you look at the map and I'll see if I can put one on the screen it shows you where it's going to charge you we won't get into the details of it but effectively if you're going to go out of the CBD area you buy a Mikey card and you just top it up like the London oer and it will charge you a couple of dollars per trip and then there's a cap on it so you might only spend $7 that day no matter how much traveling you've done the great thing alongside that is the tram system is super effective and they turn up every couple of minutes so and I know it's a really condensed area but for where we were and what we needed we didn't actually have to get a car that week now we did but that's for a different reason but if we were just staying in Melbourne the TR tra system would have been great didn't need a car Uber is available readily available about the same price as the UK and the US I wouldn't say it's significant think they also have the other apps in that region like Ola which aren't really well known on this side of the world so there are other app driver apps of Asia has different exactly but we did hire a car also how did that go which was interesting in of itself because if you're staying in the city of Melbourne they have the trams which means when you're driving you have to be mindful of the route that you take with the trams and sometimes you would see cars in the middle of the junction which was very confusing but we realized is to stay there until the charm goes past and then they can go and then sometimes it wasn't really clear which lane was for you or not definitely and we learned this this wasn't just us when we arrived there were cars on the tram lines realizing that they had to get off so I don't know if they were confused or whether they were trying to jump the queue but there was definitely an added element of difficulty difficulty also knowing if you were in the right lane so the other issue we had when we were getting out of the city was of course sometimes you you need to go left or right or go straight but sometimes your straight would become a left and then suddenly you're going off in the wrong direction which I didn't find the signage as easy as I've noticed actually I think it's better here we've had this discussion a few times and I think your original stance was that it was confusing here and the roads are a bit dangerous I think what the things that they do here is dangerous as in Road etiquette and how they have merges however for me even though Australia drives on the same side of the Road as the UK which would seemingly make something more easy because you're more used to that it feels like the left hand side of the road is the wrong side of the road it's easier to drive here but not only that because of the size of us roads and how big they can have their signs and the way they build them it's so much easier here and I've got used to three years of very easy driving so I struggled a little bit in Australia not massively the first day there was definitely some I'm in the wrong lane I should have turned here I wasn't paying attention enough our SAT now issues of not wanting to work and not work yeah our theory of it not working in that part of the world next is weather this is an interesting topic because I think it can be a bit of a difference of opinion it's perception and context like we said different people experience things differently exactly and in the leadup to going to Melbourne I was warned by colleagues that Melbourne can be a bit erratic you never quite know what you're going to get and I would personally say and this is where we're different I think the weather we experienced in Melbourne wasn't actually that bad we had some really nice hot days where we went to the winery the first day when went to the beach however I will agree that it was all over the place like it would start being hot one day and sunny then it would go to being gray then it would rain then it would be freezing cold and it does switch up in the day but also dayto day yes initially I I said that the weather was bad but on reflection and speaking to Selena it wasn't bad and there are definitely moments you can enjoy but it's moments you don't know from 1 hour to the next 4 hours what might happen and I think what gets to me which is why I interpret it as bad is it's often gray so even if it's warm and it starts off Sunny you'll maybe get a four five hour period of just grayness and immediately that tells you this day is a write off and I know it isn't because when you explain it to me and actually I actually had to go day by day with him cuz he described the weather is bad and I kept saying there's no way that Melbourne is worse than the UK and London she is right it it isn't worse and it is good weather it's not my yeah it's not my sort of weather in fact I think the second day I was at Jiu-Jitsu there one of the trainers said to me oh how you find the weather I was just like I don't he said it's schizophrenic we know that's that's the best he just like it just bounces all over the place so they're aware of that I mean if you like Variety in your weather in the day it's a great place to be all in all I really enjoyed our N9 nights in Melbourne I really went there with have no expectation other than this amazing food and I really enjoyed it and would highly recommend it as a place to visit agreed I went with not only no expectations I'm not a person that reads reviews or reads up on stuff of where should we go and really surprised myself I was surprised by how much I enjoyed being there not just the city even the trips that we did outside lot to do outside as well and I think it was quite a fulfilling place we haven't mentioned coffee and there's a reason for that I think this might be an Australian thing or at least a Southeast Australian thing because it was amazing everywhere our first experience was of course Melbourne that's where we landed and that's where we had the first nine days so I assumed it was going to be just great there but we then went on which we'll talk about shortly to hobar which is in Tasmania and also Sydney where it was equally as good it's kind of hard to describe people that live there know they tell you it's it's the best but we've we've been in the UK which has pretty good coffee we've been to France many times which has very good coffee and we've been to Italy which has very good coffee Melbourne better everywhere actually I think we could have dedic we could have dedicated a video to Coffee in Australia it was exceptional and it was something I was also thinking about coming home and thinking damn I'm going to miss that not only did we notice how the coffee here is just bad the same trainer at Jiu-Jitsu just said he comes out here quite frequently once twice a year because he competes and he just said he won't drink the coffee he said he's tried in all the different places in the end he just buys a pre-made coffee from whatever place it is so he can get a cold coffee and get his caffeine fixed and I know Americans won't necessarily understand this unless you've been to Australia have to try the coffee it's a different product yeah it's completely different our next stop was Tasmania or tazzy as the Australians call it I don't think I'd ever looked into I'm aware of Tasmania because I watched Warner Brothers cartoon so I know of the Tasmanian devil same for me it's the Tasmanian devil that was all I ever knew which isn't even representative of the animal we saw the animal and it did not look the same and we were there for two nights yes two nights and everyone in the leader was saying oh you're going to love it tazzy is such a beautiful place to go to which was a bit of a surprise cuz just never heard of it Selen was a little bit delayed to me so I got to arrive during the daytime on the first day it's a beautiful island it's really visually way yeah we thought it was a small line it's massive and Visually impressive and we ended up or Selena accidentally booked this hotel room that was overlooking we were kind of high up overlooking the port it was probably the best room and the best view we've had in any hotel room I think I'd been working at the hospital that day flew in got there later that evening but got there before Sun and I just sat in this room where you just had this sweeping view of the Hobart was it the docks and Marina I'm not sure Marina but it was very very visually pretty Selena was working the next day so when we say we got two days so we didn't really we enjoyed some coffee we enjoyed food we had another one of the pay $60 and have five courses we walked around the harbor a little bit but what we did do was we took a boat to which was can you remember how much it was super cheap it was quite cheap I can't remember remember how much under $40 I think per person it was an hour long and it essentially you could go the North or South Route and it was a very nice way just to see parts of hobar from the boat and the history super interesting I never liked history in school history in school still as I remember is very boring and very curated obviously that's what history is however when you in the location and people are telling you about the history I find it very interesting the main history of Australia as people can imagine is the Brits arrived they imprisoned everyone they made them work we were very lucky with the weather there as in cuz I think it was very hot that day yes and Hobart isn't known for necessarily great weather all year round and actually I met somebody that had explained that they moved from Melbourne to Hobart specifically because it's cooler there and for us I know we wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if it was cold out so got to appreciate the place with good weather the other thing I remembered as well as the food is that they had lots of really good bars that we didn't actually check out there while we were there but they take their gin seriously and as a gin lover is surprising that I did not go to one of the places but in all I would say if you are going over to Australia it's I think it's a little over 1 hour flight to get to Hob you mean Melbourne oh yeah Melbourne it's not a long flight definitely worth visiting for at least two nights and having the four days there our next and final stop was Sydney unfortunately because we had days in Melbourne we only got two days there as well in Sy one night and it wasn't really fully two days cuz then we left the second day yeah it really wasn't long but we were trying to be as effective as we could be so a little bit disappointed and we can't really give a four ofie because one night there's not enough time however we did get a sense of the culture because the place that we picked to stay was right on Bondi Beach so what do we think of the culture and the lifestyle in that one day that we got so immediate what we noticed was attire and physical fitness was the thing that was most making me feel insecure I kept saying you're you probably feel at home yeah you said this is your people this is your people but everyone was in sports attire either running working out there was a section that reminded me I think it's Beach where people were doing these things like pole tricks but just to point out this wasn't that makes it sound like this was only happening on the beach where we stain was set back quite a few blocks on the beach and 90% of the people were fit and if they were not going to the gym they were coming from the gym or they were going to or from the beach just showing you that they work out yeah no tops no flipflops or what they call thongs over there they're just Barefoot just roaming around with their tops off and I was like hope I'm in shape still and this isn't a demographic thing in terms of age this was irrespective this is young old older people everyone was generally qu very fit I'm not going to say quite fit I would say very fit alongside noticing that everyone was either running or working out or coming from the gym we also noticed heavily this culture of hanging out at the coffee bar so lots of people in the afternoons or in the day depending on I don't know I kind of had a sense do people even work here I don't know it does feel like that cuz a lot of people were out in the Parks or by the beach with their laptops so lots of people hanging out with friends and also when it got into the afternoons we noticed a lot of groups of Friends Meeting each other to go to the bars so just a really nice sense of people hanging out in their community and enjoying life active as well so even though Australians are known for being drinkers they're active drinkers they do their surfing they drink a bit they resurf they come back they work out drunk then they go back to the bar yeah that seemed to be the cycle though it probably yeah it did really did and that was our experience because we stayed in Bondi had we have stayed in the CBD area of Sydney I don't know if we would have noticed something different and maybe somebody that lives there or has stayed there for an extended period we got told or at least I got told not to stay in the city so although which will come on to we did visit we were told don't stay there stay closer to the beach but I don't know whether it would have made sense to do maybe half the time I think next time like we'll do time in the city just to see what it's like and especially to compare it to Melbourne as well next is food and again we can't really say much because we weren't there long enough but from what we could tell the options of food didn't seem that different to what was available in Melbourne to me we still had good food there it the mix of food seemed about the same and the quality seemed really good so for me on that one day I couldn't really say that there was anything bad to say about the food options at least no but what I can say is Sydney prices were the same as Las Vegas prices which tells you is a lot more expensive than Melbourne I don't know if there was it was like a couple of dollars either side but food and drink was quite expensive there next is transport immediately as I arrived and I got into the Uber the first thing I noticed was the traffic completely different to Melbourne in that it was Far Far busier and we were just sat in standstill traffic a lot more than we experienced in melbour and from what we know Melbourne is experiencing traffic because of a lot of Road works at the moment so there's a reason why it's happening so I've been told whereas Sydney I think that's just the norm yeah across the city but what they do have and that was very similar to Melbourne is they have a very good public transport system which is something we definitely miss living here now and pretty much most of the people I know and I met across the trip were saying they wouldn't drive they would even when we asked where to go the girl was like just go and jump on a bus and in my head was like who jumps on the bus because you get detached don't you but it's just normal for them why would you be in an Uber when you can just get a bus and it will take 15 minutes for $2 or whatever and the same thing when I went I went to a hospital that day and I asked colleague how he got there and he said oh he didn't have the car so he got on a train there so very and that to me was London living if you if you didn't drive somewhere you would either get on a bar a tube or a train so lots of options but one of my favorite modes of Transport that they had there were the commuter fairies so everyone said to us if you if you don't have time to do anything get on one of the faeries and essentially around the Sydney Harbor area there's these Ferry ports across various areas that go to different bays and essentially you can just get on a ferry and it will take you to another location and it's a great way to see the area from the ferry but what we didn't expect was to go to these amazing places and one of the places we went to was Watson Bay and it was so so nice probably one of my favorite places and more because it's a surprise I think because believe me if you're not from London get on the wage Ferry which is a commu ferry and no matter which side you get on you're going to somewhere equally as rough when you get off I thinking Grim grim and then Grimmer yeah it's very grim and even when you get off it's just it's actually physically dirty and it feels horrible here you jump on at this kind of lush green area where we got on and then as you're sailing away You're overlooking the CBD area and then you arrive with this pristine crystal clear water with a beach front and then these restaurants overlooking the beach and I'm just like how who would go right we're going to go to Australia but we're going back home who would land there and then go back to the UK it just baffled me that anyone would return it should just be a oneway ticket and I just never knew Sydney would be that nice it was surprising and that was just a random we bay that I picked on that day because of convenience the food was great we both enjoyed a drink watching the water and and I still think I'm still thinking of it right now and finally the weather way more up my street at least the days that we were there and for anybody watching this in the future which will all be because it's recorded now and published in the future it was just coming out of their summer season wasn't it cuz so we arrived end of Feb going into March so end of the summer season for Australia but it was just really nice sunny days however Sydney was a little bit more humid so it's a little bit less comfortable than when it gets warm in Melbourne but for me it was perfect and especially if you're by the Sea the ocean whichever it is there you get a nice breeze so if I had to choose weather 100% I would never be in Melbourne for weather but I would be for Sydney and pretty much everyone that I met that like Sydney for its WEA it is because of that because it's a hotter place it's more humid they don't like the yo-yoing of Melbourne they don't like the gray skies I instantly could feel the difference as soon as I arrived and I actually and because we don't have any humidity here in Vegas I think immediately when I feel it it's like a this feels so nice so I told you we should live in Florida he yeah I know I tried to convince her but she's like no my hair but maybe we'll move to a slightly more humid place in the future oh spiders not a single large bug or spider scene in Melbourne day one coffee shop one in Sydney two giant like this big spider just roaming through the coffee shop as if it's nothing it wasn't even in the wilderness or by the bush just in the coffee shop so Sydney overall great weather definitely more expensive than Melbourne and not just the stuff that we experien the homes you have a friend that either lives there or was going to live he lives there right way more expensive however what you get back from that is really nice towns great public transport beaches and all of the stuff that people dream of in England when you think about leaving it's there in Sydney it does exist the only thing I regret is that we didn't spend enough time there defin so if we ever go back to Australia Sydney will be the place that we spend more time in okay to finish up the video what do we think about Australia in general number one is even from the US which is much closer it's still a 20-hour trip to door it's painful and from the UK it's even further so I think even if you get the direct flight to Perth that one flight is 21 hours so that's the first thing it's a painful journey to go there so if you are going to go you need to spend two plus weeks probably 3 weeks there the next thing is language for me I think me and S had slightly different takes on this but we'll see what she says I didn't feel foreign once there I often feel foreign in the US so in Australia I can talk at the normal pace of a Londoner I can use all of the London terms and they don't bat an ID they don't even P to think about it it's just at natural pace so although you can hear the accent in people it's such a natural way to communicate what was your cuz you worked with people there didn't you there were similar but slightly different so first of all I love the fact that I didn't have to think about how I speak and I do have to think about how I speak here in the US I do adjust I use different words whereas in Australia I could just talk how I normally would back home which was really nice and actually I noticed it when I came back here I realized oh man I've got to adjust how I speak again so that was great and also I could do my jokes in the way that people understand it I don't have jokes I have some jokes but I could talk in the way that I normally do with the humor and that was really good the bit that I did notice is there were words that they used that AR aren't similar and I think I heard them a lot more because I was working with Australians I also noticed people recognizing my accent and pointing out my accent which I don't think happened to you but I had people actually really noticed call out where I come from oh you must be from England oh you sound Posh which was very interesting cuz I do get it here and I'm not to say that it happened a lot in Australia but it did happen for me and there are ways of phrasing things that I'm not used to the next aspect that I really noticed in Australia was safety one of the things I really liked about Australia overall certainly the places that we visited was how safe I felt I never had a moment where I was concerned about getting in an Uber on my own or walking down this street or going to this place and and I weren't always together so some places I were I was traveling alone and I kind of had the feeling that I do back home in the UK where I never really worry of of course in England you know certain areas you shouldn't be going to and of course I don't have that context for Australia but I certainly didn't get the feeling of being unsafe while I was there in contrast and this might be hard for some viewers to understand especially if you've been born and raised in America I don't say that I feel unsafe here in Vegas dayto day but there is something about the US probably the guns that make me feel unsafe and I can't describe it it's not that I live here daytoday feeling worried or concerned but there is something in the back of my mind that's always there and it's very different whereas in Australia I never had that I didn't know I had anything to add to the safety thing I feel fine in most places however there is exactly what you said is right I know for Americans this is really hard to understand this is not an attack on America or how you believe or what you believe about guns or whatever as an English person the very worse let's say you get into a road rage inant you might wind down your window you shout at them they shout at you you might get into a fight doesn't really happen but it does happen sometimes and you both walk away generally here you don't know that somebody isn't having an extremely bad day and today is the day that they're about to do something really stupid and although that isn't at the Forefront you don't go out going oh this might happen today sometimes situations come up where you're like oh I don't know I know for some Americans that makes you feel safer as a non-american it makes us feel less safe because the outcome can be so extreme for us so you're absolutely right I definitely have that I don't really think about it consciously but you're right that is something that does play out so that's our review overview of the three places that we visited on our Australian trip I think we'd both happily return there I'd go back this weekend even longer yeah me too we're not going to cover whether we would move there in this video as you probably noticed we are actually just about to create another video right now once we cut this one off on whether or not we would move to Australia so stay tuned for that one and thanks for watching

Channel: THE A & S WAY

Views: 47,999

Keywords: moving to australia, sydney and melbourne compared, life in australia, migrating australia, moving to australia from america, Brits Opinion on Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, and Tasmania Compared, best places to live in the world

Id: MSUfSgfTuTo

Length: 33min 24sec (2004 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2024