I promised the DubDopers to send an SDMB postcard from here, so here it is (I know it´s taken me awhile but this is the first day in a week I haven´t been either too drunk or hungover to get to a cybercafe!).
This trip has been great. First stop, France to see my beloved Celtic take on the mighty Bordeaux Girondins FC. Those who pay attention to these things will know we got a 1-1 draw (a very good result in European football away games), but the match itself was almost secondary to the craic as 4,000+ Celtic fans mainly from Scotland and Ireland descended on the poor little town of Bordeaux which probably is still wondering what hit it! There is only one Irish pub in Bordeaux, and I hope the staff were given nice hefty bonuses from our visit - the day afterwards one of them told my friend that they made more in the three days surrounding the match than they normally make in a year! Happy to say I contributed greatly to that profit 
Been in Madrid now since Saturday. I can´t say enough about this city, but it isn´t called MAD-rid for nothing. Halloween especially was brilliant as not only was it Halloween, but the next day was a bank holiday, and when I finally got dragged (unwillingly but in retrospect very advisably) out of the pub at 6 a.m. it was still packed wall-to-wall with revelers. Got out of bed at 7.30 pm the next night - enough said!
Well I hope everybody else is having a good time wherever you are and if I make it out of here with lung and liver intact, I´ll see you back here next week!