Eat Pray Love - Budget Style

wenn
Eat Pray Love debuted last night in Leicester Square, and we'll be queuing up tomorrow evening at our local cinema with our girlfriends and a big box of popcorn in order to watch Julia Roberts find her way to enlightenment (OK, Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert...you know what we mean).
Inspired by the film (and the book it's based on), plenty of women have made a beeline for destinations in Italy, India and Bali where Gilbert made her journey. But not all of us can afford to take a year off to travel and find ourselves - which is why we've come up with this handy guide to having your own Eat Pray Love experience...on a regular girl's bank account.
EAT
In the film, Elizabeth travels to Italy where she begins her rediscovery of her sensual side through savouring delicious Italian food and taking Italian language classes. Admittedly, this leg of the trip is not necessarily beyond everyone's budget, thanks to budget airlines: Lastminute.com is advertising two nights in Bologna for two for £187 or two nights in Naples - the birthplace of pizza - for £229.
If travel's not on the cards, consider trying an Italian cooking class at Jamie Oliver's Recipease - learn to make fiddly filled pasta or perfect risotto. Or if you're already an adept home cook, get stuck into The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. It's...well, classic - first published in 1973, and has everything you need to know to be an extraordinary Italian chef.  Afterwards: gelato and limoncello,grazie very much. GLAMOUR.COM's favourite local spot for gelato is Scoop in Covent Garden...let us know yours in the comments.
PRAY
If you don't have the means to retreat to an ashram for four months, á la Elizabeth, you might want toinvestigate the local classes available to you in your area:  from slow Hatha to fast, sweaty Ashtanga, there really is a form of yoga for everyone. There's an extensive directory here. We're also quite intrigued by Acroyoga - a challenging form that combines yoga, Thai massage and acrobatics. Acroyoga is done with partners, so it's possibly a little bit less meditative than other, more individualistic forms - but it's also quite a lot of fun for those of us who find that individual yoga practice doesn't suit our short attention spans.
LOVE
Ah, love: difficult to find at home, but we suspect also difficult to find on holiday - our vacation romanceshave always fallen a little bit short of Javier Bardem, who stars in the film. Anyway, if you're in the mood to rev up your love life, we reckon you don't necessarily need to venture far from home...but there's something to be said for venturing beyond the borders of your usual social life.
So go out somewhere different on Friday night, strike up a conversation with a cute guy at a bus stop, ask your friends if they know anyone nice for you to meet, or try online dating for the first time ever: the fact of the matter is that as much as we'd like love to find us, sometimes we have to make a little bit of effort to show it where we are. Especially, perhaps, when 'where' is not Bali.