Impressions of six cities (in no order at all)

Edinburgh - a dizzy Gothic confection, the result of a child taking its box of Escher gothic-city bits and upending them on a lumpy duvet.

Barcelona - a patchwork of relaxed, breezy neighbourhoods exhaling art and cultivated living, stiched together by cathedrals and Modernista marvels.

Florence - cicada tick heat and dust on grey-leaved trees puts you in mind of "Stealing Beauty".

Prague - a fairy tale of orange rooftops and winding ways, a paradise of cheap local food and beer, but almost overwhelmed by cloying tourism.

Milan - the moped-terror memory of reeling among smart set and student grunge clinging to a former flatmate gritting my teeth to stop from wailing like the girlfriend neither of us had.

Budapest - still seems a town for the locals, despite a littering of signs in cheerful Hunglish. Communism's tread seems to have left lighter prints here, and I've been blessed with fabulous interesting travel-friends and cheap traditional bath-houses/spas.

In less than a week, home to Australia for a month ...