Day Seven of my Melbourne trip was another HUGE day for me. I ended up doing about 11,088 steps; got rained on; visited a couple of places that I had been wanting to go to for ages and went to a very cool local play.. let me tell you all about it:

I started the day fairly early, well early for me, and headed up to Swanston Street to get the tram to Flinders Street. I went in a direction that I hadn’t been before and ended up discovering an area in behind the buildings that you wouldn’t know it was there – unless you knew it was there of course. I am assuming it was part of the RMIT campus but it looked like anyone could go and enjoy the area. And despite the rainy day, people were out playing a game of basketball. It was a really funky wee area and one that I kind of wish our University had (not that I would have been caught playing basketball!)

Our uni is certainly not this cool!

I jumped off the tram just past the Town Hall and headed up Flinders Lane, which runs parallel to Flinders Street (a main street in Melbourne). Melbourne is very grid like in its inner city street design and they have a lot of main roads along with smaller laneways. There is Bourke Street and Little Bourke Street; Collins Street and Little Collins Street. Often you will find some cool & quirky places on the little streets so it is definitely worth exploring the smaller streets as well as the main roads.

Obviously I had to take a photo of this shop on Flinders Lane!

I had one firm destination in mind – I was on the hunt for more street art, but with the rain coming and going and all the cool places along the way, I kept getting distracted. At one point I ended up escaping the rain in a place called The Meatball and Wine Bar – I mean, with a name like that how could I not check it out!

The Meatball & Wine Bar – cool by name, cool by nature

Unfortunately I didn’t quite miss the rain entirely and I ended up getting rather wet at one point because no, of course I didn’t take an umbrella with me!! But I didn’t actually mind because it meant that I pretty much had the streets to myself – well I had the back alleys of Melbourne mostly to myself (until the rain stopped that is).

Duckboard Place – another gritty alleyway for me to explore

I think this trip, more than any other, has made me realise what kind of photos I really enjoy taking. I love the gritty, urban nature of alleyways. I feel really proud of my photography from this Melbourne trip, more than I have in the past. On my more recent trips to London – visiting areas like Shoreditch & Camden, I’ve realised that urban/street photography is where I feel most excited – and I feel that is showing in the photos I’ve taken more recently.

One of my favourite photos from the trip! And no, I didn’t know the guy

I had ended up at another famous street art lane – AC/DC Lane, though I have to be honest it wasn’t my favourite. I don’t actually know why but AC/DC Lane didn’t really appeal to me as much as I thought it would. In the same area of AC/DC Lane is another lane called Duckboard Place, which I actually did like. By the time I had finished at AC/DC Lane, the rain had stopped and the sun was making an appearance – and so were the people. Time to move on.

AC/DC Lane – it was umm.. interesting

After checking out AC/DC Lane & Duckboard Place, I stopped in at the next door Bullrun Cafe for a bite to eat – a cool kind of cafeteria type place. Then I headed to the next dingy alleyway I could find and checked out Higson Lane – where I was able to find a couple of ghost signs, a Union Jack and also the remains of a WRDSMTH artwork (one of my favourite artists).

The iconic typewriter of artist WRDSMTH, among other things

I then headed towards Hosier Lane and once again got distracted… this time by The Forum – to be fair though, it is kind of hard not to be distracted by this building. The building was completed in 1929 and was originally known as The State Theatre and has a history that covers film, cabaret, comedy and live music. It is a true Melbourne Icon.

The gorgeous Forum

Then came time for Hosier Lane. I have been here many times before but it is still one of those places that I like to return to. This time I was all about watching other people and I managed to snap a few shots of other people’s photo shoots.. bit cheeky haha but also kind of genius don’t you think?

Hijacking someone else’s photo shoot – genius or cheeky?

I had been out for a few hours so headed back to the apartment for a rest before my sister, great-niece and I headed out to a locally written & performed play. Located in an old courthouse with probably about 50 or so seats, the play The Confessions of Jeremy Perfect really good & a great way to spend an evening, even if we did go to the wrong theatre to begin with haha. Oh and my great-niece won the door prize of a bottle of wine & some jelly babies.

La Mama’s Courthouse – very cool theatre 

Only two more days left to recap – goodness knows what I am going to write about once I have finished recapping Melbourne! I also still have to edit the last day of photos – there were seriously a lot of photos taken that day!

As always, here are some more photos from Day Seven (there are a lot!!):

I’d but this photo in twice because I couldn’t decided which version to choose 🙂

And there you have it. Another day recapped.
So sorry for the mountain of photos but I am trying to give you a taste of what I saw each day and because I take A LOT of photos, it is kind of hard to narrow down to just a few.