Monday 12th December: Perth

We transferred to our hotel fairly close to the centre of Perth today and then set off to explore the city. It’s fair to say that we don’t entirely feel we’ve ‘got’ Perth yet.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a clean, smart, modern city, but it feels a bit soulless. Coffee shops are closed by 3 or 4 and there don’t seem to be a great number of eateries for the more evening crowd.
Our theory is that, with Perth being such a hugely spread out city, people come in specifically for work or shopping and then do their evening socialising in the many suburban centres (or maybe, in some cases, just don’t come in to the city at all).
Positive highlights have been the pleasant (ongoing) developments around Elizabeth Quay, the amount of older architecture still intact (sometimes only a facade) and a huge amount of public art.
A word of appreciation too for the newish bus station, accessed only from above and organised like a train station with ‘platform’ sections for each bus stop. It all seems to work very efficiently (and yes, I know this last but is a bit ‘transport geeky’).