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.

Ooh, is that the smell of neglect in the air! If this blog was a woman, she'd have given me the unceremonious dump by now (actually, precisely that happened to me once.. a sad story for another day). But, as they say, time flies when you're having fun, and Fun Part One was a working week in Milan.



At the outset let me say: Women of Milan, you are stunning. You can look down your supercilious noses at me anytime.



Despite a spot of November fog, it was clear that it was a beautiful city. The fabulously intricate Duomo has next to it a great big shooping centre that wuld be better off as a church or a castle. Even the McDs in it looked stylish. Style just oozes out of the cobbles, and no wonder the top fashion labels live here.



I'm a big fan of Mediterranean food, and Italy did not disappoint. Heaped plate of antipasti, followed by creamy risotto, or spaghetti with mussels, or thin-crust (the way it should be!) pizza, all washed down with plenty of vino rosso and capped with tiramisu. My god, how do the Italians stay so trim??

Another thing that struck me was how lax the Eyeties are as a people. The Indian in me loves it. When we disembarked at Malpensa airport, the immigration control booths were unmanned; two officers had to run in and shepherd the passengers back. On the way to the hotel, out taxi stopped a metre away from a three-point-turner, who hauled his pickup around with a cigarette between his lips, a mobile in one hand and no eye contact or acknowledgement whatsoever. Meals are long-drawn out, scooterists weave wildly between cars, arguments are loud and smiles, when conceded, are genuine. La vita e bella, indeed.