Newcastle has a fairly compact town centre. This is handy; it makes crawling from pub to club that much easier. And there is no doubt that this will happen - you can't help it - a night out on the Toon is just brilliant; I swear I once saw the Archbishop Of Canterbury staggering along the Quayside with a bottle of Becks and singing My Old Man's A Dustman.

Impressive architecture too which is nice; it gives you something to look at during those sober moments. There are two main areas for nights out; the Bigg Market and The Quayside - the former is v v much students and the latter is more on the trendy side (so be careful - £2.70 a pint in places). There are plenty of attractive "Students please drink here" kind of offers in most of the pubs and it's pretty much all the clubs which let you in cheaper with your student card.

There are millions of restaurants in the town centre and lots of them offer discounts to you - some have half price Happy Hours. Shopping is good with plenty of choice but mostly along your bog-standard M&S lines. If you like big centres then get off to The Metrocentre, which is about a 10 minute bus ride from the town.

There are 3 main cinemas: the huge Warner Brothers jobby outside the centre but within walking distance, the usual Odeon, and Tyneside Cinema which shows lots of arty stuff. There are plenty of music venues around and about; the Telewest Arena is the biggest and that's where the big bands go; for clubs nip down to Shindig for clubbers-clubbing and Icon or Planet Earth for heavy cheese mixed in with dancey stuff.