On Saturday, I took the tram into the city centre for the first time. Happily, for my geographically dyslexic self, all the streets there are either parallel or perpendicular to one another, so I didn't get lost at all.

When I stepped off the tram, virtually the first thing I saw was a Chinese parade. I think the actual first thing I noticed was a McDonald's though.

Wandered around a bit, checked out a few shops, and I agonised over all the heavy books I wanted but wouldn't be able to bring back to England thanks to baggage restrictions. I found a relatively slim volume called "Death Metal Music", a sociological study of the accompanying subculture. As I'd love to do one myself, I convinced myself I could make space for it . . . only to find it cost $71.95 (i.e. twice as much as I'd ever consider paying for such a tome) so I had to leave it.

I went to the top of Rialto Towers - the tallest building in Melbourne - from which the view was predictably rather good. Unlike looking down on Edinburgh, though, I couldn't see the edges of the city, so distant were they. Afterwards, I made the mistake watched a film they were showing there, as, while images of attractions in the surrounding area aren't necessarily a bad thing, the accompanying music was painfully slushy.

Then I took the tram around the outskirts of the CBD, and then, dutifully, I went to see what is approximately the 5234th cathedral interior I've witnessed in my short life. It was quite an odd interior though - the walls were covered with turquoise and brown tile, and some of the stained glass windows indicated nothing other than what Tetris would look like the blocks diamond-shaped.

On Sunday, I caught the train into the city centre, failed to realise I needed to validate my ticket, and went to the jail. Fortunately, the ticket gatekeeper was sympathetic to my plight and I went to the jail on my own accord. The information was mostly inside the cells itself, which was cool, and I got an idea of the cruelty that must have gone on there when a small boy tripped over the leg of a tripod belonging to a film crew shooting in there and narrowly avoided taking a heavy light to the head. Not that this part was intentional, or a good thing, but it was atmospheric nonetheless.

Then I went to the immigration museum. My guidebook said I'd have to pay $7.70 to get in, but today it was free to students, which was good, because I didn't find much that interested me there - after all the hours I spent reading legalese about getting here myself, the last thing I wanted to do was see more of it. There was also a large bagpipe exhibit: as the man who lives opposite my parental home plays the bagpipes, and I hate them the fire of a thousand suns, this didn't inspire the intended level of delight in Australia's multicultural heritage in me.

Spent the evening finishing "Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure". At one point in it, he was about to go to RMIT, which I'd walked past earlier. As it turned out, though, he didn't go there, but the next place he went to was the nearest service station to said parental abode.