The City Library is actually a conglomerate of libraries spread across inner-city locations, in the grand pursuit of those ungainly twins, convenience and annoyance. For instance, there's a Library approximately ten minutes stagger from my front door, but every single book I currently want to read is located at the East Melbourne location, despite the fact that it is about the same size as our apartment.

Now, allegedly they do inter-library transfers at the drop of a hat, so I could've requested someone else bring the books to me. However, I can practically spit on East Melbourne from my workplace (except, of course, for being too well brought up to do anything of the sort) so that seemed rather an overreaction. Instead, upon completion of work today, I wandered across the park to make my raid in person.

The double benefit to this was the chance to just wander around in East Melbourne. It's the sort of thing I do when I'm a tourist - we meandered around Georgetown in Washington DC for most of an hour, just looking - but never do in Melbourne (unless really, really lost, which sort of takes the aimless fun out of it).

This may have been a bad idea. I'm now pretty much desperately in love with East Melbourne. The trees and the cobbled back-alleys. The ancient mansions. The ancient mansions that have been carved up into modern apartments. (The church to which same has been done!) The terraces with overgrown gardens and wrought-iron balconies. The deco apartment blocks. They're all jumbled together in such a way that even the modern additions - some in the style of, some absolutely and utterly not - fit in. It's eclectic. It's quiet in a restrained (not dull) way. The corner store is a snooty winecellar. I want to live in this neighbourhood so much.

I'm sure I'm going to love living in Glen Iris when we get out there. It's very pretty. It's relaxed but not slovenly. But releasing my stranglehold on inner-city living is going to be extremely difficult.