Touristing around home...

I haven't had any holiday happy snaps to post on here for a while, but a couple of weeks ago I did spend a very pleasant sunny Saturday afternoon strolling around the city taking photos of stuff and showing it off to a friend who had been visiting Melbourne for a year or so. So, here's Melbourne showing off some of its pretty sides - it's not as spectacular as somewhere like Sydney (due to the lack of things like a snorting great harbour, a huge bridge and an opera house in the middle of the city - but the convenience of not having the harbour getting in the way of everything all the time makes up for at least some of this), but it scrubs up pretty nicely nonetheless... (and by the way, all of this is within walking distance of my apartment - I do enjoy inner-city living...)

First, here's my apartment block (and yes, it's pink and peach coloured, which I do quite like), and a shot down the street I live in - which has apparently just been heritage-listed, for being a 3-section road with 4 rows of trees and a set of tramlines down the middle of it. All of which is very nice, except when you're trying to cross it (either in a car, on a bike or on foot) - which is a little bit (or a lot) like a game of Frogger: cross the first bit to the first median strip (or the gap in the median strip if in a car), make sure there are no cars or trams coming northbound and scoot out onto the northbound side of the tram lines, make sure there are no trams coming sounthbound and wander onto the southbound side of the tram lines, wait for a gap in southbound traffic and get onto the second median strip, and then get across onto the far side while dodging both cars and bikes in the other southbound lanes...




My local post office:


A couple of shots from the Melbourne University campus:



The old shot tower inside the Melbourne Central shopping centre (called a shot tower because they used to make lead shot by dropping molten lead from the top of the tower, it makes a nice round ball as it falls and cools), which now has a big glass cone over the top of it:


A few random-ish shots from around the city:






The State Library:


The mosaic on the side of the Fire Department building:


The Catholic cathedral, made from bluestone (a traditional building material around here, and a bit unusual... but makes for a pretty imposing if slightly severe appearance for a cathedral):


Another one of the more interesting buildings:


The old Forum theatre (which coincidentally was owned for a few years by a church I used to go to):


Federation Square:




The Yarra river, Southbank and the sports stadiums (or should that be stadia..? - in any case, the big one with the light towers is the MCG, which seats 95,000 or so, and which hosted the first international cricket Test match in 1877):



The floral clock just south of the city:


The Shrine of Remembrance (our main war memorial):


And just to finish with, here are a handful of pictures taken from the top of the Shrine, showing the city, the suburbs, the Westgate Bridge (yes, we also have a big bridge..!), and a little bit of the bay as well.