New Years Served up Hogmanay Style

Here is my 20-day overdue New Years account.

Hogmanay is Edinburgh's New Years celebration. The city's population during the holiday triples… or something ridiculous like that. The celebration starts 29 December and lasts through New Years Day.

Monday 29 December 2008
The Torch Procession: the coolest thing I’ve done in Edinburgh. I had a bit of trouble pushing through the crowds to get to my friends, but thanks to my persuasive skills, a security officer let me cut through City Chambers. I caught up with everyone in front of St. Giles Cathedral right as the crowd started moving. If you’ve been to Old Town, picture High Street’s sidewalks and road packed shoulder to shoulder from the City Chambers all the way down to the John Knox House. Now picture a lit torch in everyone’s hand. For fear of sounding like a 12-year-old, it was so cool. We walked west on the Royal Mile, north on The Mound, and turned right to walk east on Princes Street. This is the only time of the year thousands of people could get away with lolly-gagging down the usually traffic-packed Princes Street. We caught up with the bagpipers right about Calton Hill Cemetery and followed them up Calton Hill, where we were greeted by a 20-foot bonfire. Then the fireworks. My family can tell you that I’ve never been one to be amused by fireworks. One display looks like the next, and you’ve seen it all after the first 30 seconds. Maybe it was the view of Old and New Towns behind me, the Shame to my left, Nelson’s Monument to my right, and my friends all around me… but these were hands down the best fireworks I’ve seen. The show went for nearly 20 minutes, and I loved every second of it.

Tuesday 30 December 2008
Dance Festival. Grassmarket was closed from Victoria Street down to Kings Stables Road to make room for two stages. Simultaneously on each stage were a variety of dance performers. We saw tap dancers, break dancers, Scottish folk dancers, swing dancers, salsa dancers, Chinese dragon dancers, and show girls. My favorite was the country western dance troop. All claiming to be siblings (and yet they look nothing alike and are all about the same age) and to be from Texas (with a Hollywood-heavy fake accents), they broke down and taught a line dance to the couple thousand in the crowd. I ate it up. It took me back to my Scuffle Town days of high school. Sigh…

Wednesday 31 December 2008- Thursday 1 January 2009
New Years night was fun, but my favorite parts were the two days leading up. We met our friends at Angela’s flat in the Grassmarket. We then leisurely wandered back up to the top of Calton Hill to watch the firework displays. Yes, plural. Fireworks shot from Calton Hill, the castle, and another location too far away to tell. This was the first year in several years that I wasn’t in Montreat with my beloved summer staff friends, so I must admit I missed the crowded living room in Glen Rock. We saw no ball drop, so there was no count-down. There was no collective, “Happy New Year.” The suckers who paid for the street party tickets collectively sang “Auld Lang Syne” (it is Scotland…), but the economically wary kids on the hill missed out on such. But it was still a great way to bring in the New Year. We moved on then to Scott’s flat and stayed awake until it hurt to hold our eyes open.

So that is how I spent my New Years. With new friends in a foreign land. Couldn't have been better!