Meet the guide in the foyer of your hotel, or at an agreed meeting place, and step into the lively street life for which Melbourne is renowned.

Feel the vibrancy of the city's famous Laneway Culture surge through you.

Laneways were once dark and dirty places to be avoided.

Now, in a complete transformation, they're the homes of restaurants and cafes, galleries and bars, fashion and street art.

Luxuriate in the old-world opulence of the two nineteenth-century arcades, the Block Arcade and the Royal Arcade.

Sense the boom times that catapulted Melbourne into the ranks of the world's richest cities during the extraordinary Gold Rush in the nineteenth century.

Melbourne is one of the leading cities in the world for public transport.

Feel the clanging charm of the tram network when you get off at the top of Bourke Street, within sight of the formidable Parliament House.

And note that trams are free within the city.

At the top of Bourke Street, stoke your curiosity by ducking into one of the independent bookshops that were among the reasons why Melbourne was named a World City of Literature, the second such city, behind only Edinburgh.

Or treat yourself by tucking into a bowl of pasta at Pellegrini's, the city's original pasta house, which serves delicious lasagne and ravioli.

Pellegrini's also put Melbourne on the road to becoming the nation's Coffee City by importing the first espresso machine.

From there, we have divergent options:

Bask in the allure of Eurasian restaurants and cool bars on Crossley Street, before walking down Chinatown.

Melbourne's Chinatown is one of the oldest in the Western World, and features everything from high-end cuisine to dumpling houses.

Or head south along Meyers Place, the original site of Melbourne's thriving bar scene, and hear the distinctive sound of lovers clinking glasses.

Proceed down Flinders Lane, once the home of what we called the “Rag Trade”, which was the term to describe the clothing and textile industry.

These days, Flinders Lane features a panoply of restaurants which describe themselves as “modern Australian”.

Other attractions include the mouth-watering morsels of Queen Victoria Market and the sumptuous grandeur of State Library Victoria, with its magnificent domed reading room.