Hogmanay in Edinburgh

Well, what can I say, I had the time of my life on Hogmanay in Edinburgh. I had heard what a wonderful celebration it was, but was pleased to find that it exceeded my already high expectations!

As stated in an earlier post, I had flown home to Mississippi for Christmas. It was a wonderful time with family as I had not seen them in a year. My mother fed me delicious home baked sweet potato pies, pecan pies, peanut butter cups, Martha Washington balls, the list goes on and on. I did the best I could and restrained myself to one treat a day.

The Christmas holidays were also tweaked with a storm of sadness. My Italian boyfriend and I broke up over the Christmas holidays. We had been together for about a year and living together for 4 months. Old Santa up there was my boyfriend for Christmas last year and ended up being my boyfriend again this year!

I returned to Edinburgh to an empty flat and lots of crying. I was however bound and determined to have a wonderful New Year's Eve celebration as 2009 just has to be better! I therefore went and stood in a huge queue (line) of people for over 3 hours to get tickets to the Hogmanay Street Party on New Year's Eve. I cannot remember the last time I stood that long for anything? Maybe Guns and Roses when I was like 16 or something.

While in the queue, I made some nice friends. There were 3 people who lived in Cardiff, Wales and had flown up just for the night. They worked in social services and the guy was from Germany and 2 girls were from Portugal and Romania. After playing chirades with them for a few hours and hearing them call every hotel in Edinburgh for a room (the person they were supposed to stay with left the keys with a Bolivian girl who was no where to be found), I felt sad that they might have to sleep on the street, so offered to let them stay at my flat - after all, it was empty due to the recent departure of my boyfriend back to Tuscany. They were of course over joyed and decided to join me to a party thrown by some of my friends. We went and had some great wine and food and then off to the Hogmany Street Party.

It was an amazing night. I had heard about how cool Edinburgh can be for New Year's Eve, and had celebrated in cities like New Orleans and NYC before, but nothing prepared me for the atmosphere and cool factor of celebrating in Edinburgh. I had the time of my life. We watched some AMAZING fireworks, danced to Groove Armada and hugged tons of people wishing them a Happy New Year - the mood was wonderful and I left knowing that 2009 would be a wonderful year for me. I am SO excited.