Yesterday was jam-packed again as my Godmother and I explored the city from top to bottom. She, as a Melburnian, rarely gets to see the city from a tourist's perspective, so as much for her as for me, we picked up some self-guided tour maps and asked for some advice for some great places to see.

We chose the 'Arcades and Laneways' map; Melbourne is famous for being a centre for culture and the arts with many little alleyways that have been creatively taken advantage of (I will explain later). Our first stop was St Paul's cathedral where, after wandering around, saw a plaque for a person named Eric Stephen Loveday; many will know that this is interesting to me as one of my middle names is Loveday. After some research I found he was a vicar in London and the Chaplain to the King who was visiting Australia when he died. As a leading religious broadcaster, he came to arrange closer relations between the BBC and the ABC but sadly, he suffered a heart attack. Although not blood related, it saddens me to think how he died so suddenly and what he may have done for television had he not died.

After this, we followed the map down to Degraves St., our first laneway. We first stopped at Il Papiro, where all the paper sold is made in Italy. Although the street is haven of cafes and shops, we did not stop again, but continued on across Flinders Lane at the end to Centre Place. Here there is cafe after cafe squashed into the smallest place possible with a few boxes and crates to sit on to enjoy the hustle and bustle of people walking by. The overload on your senses in phenominal as the flavours from each cafe mingles in the air with the noise of chatter, all the while your eyes are trying to focus on all the street art and cafe themes and decorations.

Through Centre Way we then went, at the end we took our first detour. We had been told about a building called 333 on Collins St. so, as we were already on the right street, we took a walk down, only to find this magnificent building which used to be a bank. The interior design was beautiful, far away from the noise outside, and has been kept in excellent condition. We then crossed the street to the ANZ Gothic Bank, the first ANZ bank in Melbourne, which has only swapped the paper to computers and kept the inside just as it was.

Getting back on track we walked back to our route and continued through Block Arcade and Block Place before continuing on to Royal Arcade, the oldest shopping arcade in Australia. Here you can find the famous Gog and Magog statues, legendary giants that sit either side of a massive clock where they have struck the hour since 1892. We were just in time to see the hour being rung in, but with a disappointment as they only struck their individual bells once each and then stopped (rather than the six each I was hoping for). We walked through the arcade, admiring and exploring the shops, stopping in the games and toy shops just because they looked so enchanting!

Realising it was lunchtime, we found a cafe and had some hot food to keep us going. Here we discussed the problems I have had in finding the particular mosquito net I needed for my trip to Fiji because, although I had bought one already, I would have to treat it with an anti-mosquito chemical myself which didn't really fill me with glee. My Godmother looked up some camping shops in the city and we decided it a good idea to go and see if there was anything better I could buy. So after noting the addresses, we took a much larger detour further west of the cbd (central business district). With little success we found most outdoor shops were low on stock and could only really provide me with what I had already. While we were up the far end of Swanston St., we admired the City Baths and the RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) buildings.

We had been given the knowledge that a small laneway off Swanston street was a great place to view some of Melbourne's best street art so we took the oppurtunity, as we were so close, to have a peek and by golly it was amazing. Barely an inch of the walls of Literature Lane were empty; we had stumbled into a gallery of work layered on top of each other. Our detour continued down to The State Library where we took almost an hour to take a look round the La Trobe Reading Room with its magnificent glass dome roof and then an exhibition in the Cowen Gallery of artwork of Melbourne and the State Library itself.

We had also been told about the Wheeler Centre, a centre for books, writing and ideas. We weren't sure what to expect and although we took a little look around a library, it is mostly used for workshops and talks held throughout the year. Well it was now time for afternoon tea, so we went down to the basement of the centre to MOAT, a cute cafe with wallpaper that looks like bookshelves and adorable tea cups. Our plan was that the only way to find my mosquito net was to sit down and phone the other outdoor shops in the city we hadn't been to and ask if they had what we wanted. Amazingly we found a place called Bogong Equipment had plenty of exactly what we wanted in stock! So after our tea and coffee we walked there and picked one up as well as having a browse and picking up a sun hat for me also. The shop was on Little Bourke St. which seems to house outdoor shop after outdoor shop so I know where to go if I am stuck again!

We then tried to get back on track with our tour route, cutting out some of the route to make it fit in to our day. Getting back to Little Collins St., we found Union Lane, another marvel of street artwork that just stopped and started at the entrance and exit to the lane. After a few photos we reached Howey Place. Here we walked through to Capitol Arcade where we snuck in to The Capitol Theatre and by chance, a nice Comedy Festival staff member who was there, let us take a look into the theatre which used to be an 'extraordinary picture palace'.

We had decided beforehand, that we would stay in the city a buy tickets to one of the Comedy Festival shows. Across from Capitol Arcade is the Town Hall, which is the centre for the festival, where we could take a look at what was on that evening. As soon as we stepped onto the pavement, we were bombarded with leaflets from comedian's trying to convince us to come to their show. We took a look at the line up board for Thursday and found about 200 shows on offer! We had time to make our decision and after talking to the people there, felt we wanted to see more than one comedian and possibly at least one should be Australian and so settled on The Comedy Zone, a line-up of the 5 best up and coming comedians from across Australia.

With time to get to the venue, we finished our tour route through a few more arcades and alleyways. Our last stop was Chloe, a bar and restaurant made famous by the nude portait of a woman called, you guessed it, Chloe; who, when the portrait was done, 'shocked consevative Melbourne'. Back at Federation Square we decided to catch the free Circle tram around Melbourne where we could get off at a stop close to our venue. The tram is one of the old trams that first roamed the streets of the city with bare wood and a bit more bounce. The tram took us down to the Docklands and gave a commentary on some of the views from the windows; the sun set as we rode back through the city and we hopped off at Russel St. to walk to our venue for the evening.

Trades Hall is usually home to the Victorian Trades Council but for the festival it is also home to a load of comedy shows. We bought our tickets and sat and waited as we still had half an hour till it started. When it was time to go in, I wasn't expecting the little stage and three rows of seats with another three round benches cosily crammed into the room. Not judging by appearances though, we all waited in anticipation for the acts to come on. There were five in total, but one comedian hosted; out of the five, four were male and three of them were good, unfortunately the other two weren't that great, but that might just be my taste in humour. We had a great time and after it finished, we got the free shuttle bus back to Town Hall. From there we walked back down Swanston St. picking up some KFC for dinner on the way to the train station where we just managed to catch the train home.