Finally, a Eurotrip for pleasure rather than business. Of course, to emphasise the point to myself, I overdosed on the pleasure aspect.. me and my addictive personality.. sigh. Anyhoo, you can take for granted that vast quantities of various toxic substances went down the hatch. But Spain's like that. And this weekend in Galicia, at the northwestern corner of the country that sits on top of Portugal overlooking the Atlantic, was 72 hours of brilliance.

Santiago de Compostela is a student town and a pilgrim town. Nuff said. Means you look up to see great cathedral spires, and down to see bunches of funloving young folk trawling the streets at 4am (or 2am or 6am). There's a fantastically atmospheric Old Town, a maze of cobbles and alleys full of smoky characterful bars which shouts to the gods that it will not go quietly into the night.

You can ask the next table for a joint and smoke it without looking over your shoulder. You can quaff small, full glasses of licore cafe (coffee-flavoured aguardente) till your throat feels like treacle. You can take two hours to eat fried octopus and salty pimentos and mushrooms and tortillas, wash it down with coffee and cigarettes, walk down the midnight streets and sit in a quiet square to hear buskers play violins and Spanish guitar and Gallego bagpipes and sing smoky serenades; people will not put their heads down and walk briskly by, but stop to cheer and dance and enjoy the moment. Even constant rain can't dampen high spirits.

It was great to see old uni mates and meet new people, feel time and pressure and work slip away and just revel in the wonderfully foolish association of younger and more carefree times. To catch up on drifting lives and see that no man is an island, that the bells toll for all of us. These are the moments we live for. These are the moments we will remember.