Don't get me wrong, I love the impulse buy. Walking past a shop, seeing that purse/pair of shoes/sweater/skirt/you-name-it-I've-bought-it-and-couldn't-afford-it-insert-item-here. But, um, after my extremely cheap whirlwind trip to Dublin, I can't get all these crazy low-priced airfares from London outta my head. So, I've made a few impulse buys in the past few days: I'm going to Germany for New Years', which isn't so crazy since I'm going to visit friends I haven't seen in awhile. There is a logical reason for going there. But tonight my friend Jen and I were sitting around talking about how we needed something to get us out of our "we wanna go home NOW" funk (we are both homesick for B.C. and ready to go home for Christmas). So we played around a little on Ryanair.com (also known as howthehelldotheymake money.com) and decided we would buy the cheapest tickets we could find to wherever, and GO there. Actually, the cheapest tickets were 2 pence each way, for a grand total of 4 pence each plus tax, to some remote place in southern Italy. The problem was we couldn't find accommodation. So we had to pick the second-cheapest tickets. So next weekend we're going to...Palermo! That's right, in the heart of Sicily, the birthplace of the mafia, a pasta lover's paradise (won't be so good for my whole low-carb thing)...we're going. For 98 pence each. We've booked ourselves into a hostel called "Giorgio's House" after reading reviews about how Giorgio meets you at the airport and tours you around Palermo free (complete, according to his website, with "jogging and stretching in the morning"). It sounded too good to pass up. Too good, in that it will provide us both with blog fodder. So stay tuned for madness with the mafia in Palermo...I'm hearing the theme music from "Raging Bull" in my head right now. The music from the spaghetti sauce commercial. You know what I'm talking about...