cITY Arcades in Melbourne

City arcades: The city's network of shopping arcades is Australia's most extensive with the Block Arcade (between Collins and Elizabeth streets, built in 1891) its undeniable crowning glory. Here you'll find imported Italian mosaic floors, glazed ceilings supported by elaborate iron-lace columns, and octagonal glass domes. Royal Arcade (between Bourke Street Mall and Little Collins Street, built in 1869), is Melbourne's oldest and features two wonderful folklore giants of the ancient Britons Gog and Magog, who strike the hour.

Other arcades such as Collins two3four, Australia on Collins, The Walk, the Galleria Shopping Plaza and Centrepoint Mall offer an impressive mix of large flagship stores, unique owner-operated shops and quality cafes and foodcourts and all the arcades sit within a block of each other off Little Collins Street.

The laneways: This is a world just waiting to be explored; a web of lanes, alleys, little streets and arcades. Some lanes have been reborn and hum with quirky city life. Others are still waiting to be discovered. Check out Punch Lane or the combined office-retail-residential project between Little Lonsdale and Lonsdale streets Car-free, café-lined Degraves Street (in the Flinders Quarter) is a streak of gently undulating umbrellas hiding patrons from the midday summer sun (or mid-winter drizzle). Nearby funky Block Place (in the Collins Street precinct)is an intimate niche so narrow that the awnings from opposing businesses kiss overhead, while The Causeway, just across Little Collins Street, is another deep ravine of outdoor tables and, in nearby Centre Place, key-hole cafés buzz with diners. The lanes either side of the Chinatown strip (Little Burke Street) are a rich source of indoor Asian eateries and have been for well over a century. But the mother of all alfresco lanes is Hardware Lane where traffic gives way to a long line of trees, plant-thick window boxes and a canvas sea of awnings lapping gently at the tables' edge.

The bar scene: The most successful product of Melbourne's laneway renaissance is the boom in bars. Single, unassuming doorways, often with just a discreet sign, open into sumptuous and often spacious interiors. Some are designer cool, while others are miscellaneous mixes of carefully chosen, jumble-sale furnishings. These funky watering holes can be found throughout Melbourne's lanes including Meyers Place, Bennetts Lane, Bullens Lane, Sniders Lane and Market Lane.