My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
December 2022 to January 2023
Celebrating New Years has been a challenge for me. I find that the more I try to create an amazing experience (often opting to spend more money to find myself in a crowded space) and thus increasing my expectations of the awesomeness of the night, the more underwhelming and disappointing it ends up being. The bigger I try to make it, the worse it turns out to be. I tend to find that I’m happiest when I’m safe at home surrounded by a select group of my favorite people. I told my friends about this conundrum and they agreed that it was a challenge. So this year we struck for a happy medium: I would surround myself with friends (yay), and then also fly across the world to a city known to be one of the top places in the world to celebrate New Years and we’d buy tickets to a street party (cautiously set myself up for underwhelmment).
On New Years Eve, like every day in Edinburgh, Bri and I struggled to get everyone out of bed and out of the house. But we were finally on our way! We had stumbled across an Australian Bar the night before and that seemed like a great place to start celebrating as 2023 swept across the time zones (also because we all met in Australia, for those of you who haven’t read previous posts).
Rob had arrived the night before and as we walked up a street we had traversed many times before, the graffiti was suddenly much more personal.
We wound through the streets and Rob said what we’d been saying over and over again over the past few days: This city is so beautiful that I’m happy just to walk around in it!
We returned to Aus!
Georgie ordered a guiness.
I laughed – here we were in Scotland, at an Australian pub and she ordered a drink from Ireland.
Well Oz wasn’t the party we thought it would be, and there was no food menu, so we set out toward our next adventure. We stopped in the cemetery around the corner to visit Tom Riddle’s grave. The tour guide, bless him, was telling tourists who the actual guy was, in spite of the fact that most of the people there had come because they are Harry Potter fans. I don’t remember what he said, except that the name was spelled slightly differently and he might have been a lawyer?
We filled our bellies with Italian food and then began our preparations for the big celebration. We bundled up and filled our bags with cocktails packaged according to the street fair’s rules.
Despite the many reminders on the group chat, Rob hadn’t gotten a ticket. After standing in line for what turned out to be a different New Years party, he had come home empty handed. Georgie offered to stay back with Rob so he wouldn’t be alone on New Years. They walked us to the park, but when it was pretty clear that we still wouldn’t be able to secure Rob a ticket, Bri, Brian and I headed into the mayhem. We took a left near the ferris wheel and it wasn’t crowded at all. We also realized that we wouldn’t be able to see anything, so we took each other’s hands and wove our way into the center.
We were there a couple of hours before midnight, where we stood listening to the DJ and we held our ground as we were bumped and pushed from every direction.
But we had a great view of the castle!
As I stood there I remembered the last time I had been in a crowd like this. For the 4th of July in 2001, my family and I were in New York City. They blocked off the freeway so that people could crowd onto it to see the fireworks over the river. I distinctly remember being behind an exceptionally tall man thinking that there was no way a fireworks show would be so good that it would make up for the discomfort of being in this kind of crowd (although the comparison a couple of years later of being on a rooftop in Brooklyn watching the same fireworks from the other side made that holiday even more enjoyable). It only took me 22 years to forget how much I really don’t like crowds. This time, however, I was okay. I was able to acknowledge that this wasn’t my preference without getting all upset about it. I was with my friends. I couldn’t really hear them, but with all the surrounding body heat, the cold wasn’t unbearable. I had cocktails to sip. This wasn’t going to last forever.
The girl in front of us had to go to the bathroom. It was very obvious that if anyone left, they would not be able to return to this prime spot. Her friend reluctantly left with her.
And then it was midnight!
We counted down, and bounced around until the crowds began to disperse.
Oh! And it was Brian’s birthday!
On the first day of 2023 (Brian’s birthday) we finally scheduled our tour of the castle for 1pm so that we intentionally wouldn’t lay around in bed all day.
At the top of the hill, the views were spectacular.
I just couldn’t get enough of these views!
We visited the crown jewels and a museum where we learned that Rob had been a dog in a previous life. We wandered around more of the city, ate some more food, and then tried to have an early night – Bree and Bri’s train was at 6am the next morning.
The next day, Georgie, Rob and I ended up at Wetherspoons, a chain of free houses all over the UK that specialize in food and drinks that anyone can afford. We sat there ordering more drinks and savoring each other’s company for our final few hours together. At the train station, we would part ways. Rob would go back home and Georgie and I would return to London for a couple more days of sightseeing with Bree and Bri.
