Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had an enormously lovely New Years Eve, whether you enjoyed it from your cozy couch or went out and par-tayed like it was 15 years after 1999. The Street Party at Edinburgh's Hogmanay was like nothing I've ever done/seen before, and I'm so happy that I was able to experience it, even just once. I'm so lucky to have been able to see a bit of the set by Chvrches, and then one of my favorite artists of the last couple years, King Creosote, whose set ended at the exact moment that 11pm fireworks went off. I hope you can excuse the poor quality of these photos, but crowds/cameras/beer don't mix... I was being pretty conservative with the picture-taking.

That was, of course, before I spent a half hour miserably wedged like a sardine in what I can only describe as a heaving sea of people, hardly able to move at all. It might be the only social situation in which literally hugging strangers is acceptable, mostly for safety reasons. Once I got out of that rather terrifying debacle, I gladly downed a pint of Strongbow, managed miraculously to find my group of friends as we counted down to midnight and took in the amazing fireworks displays both from Edinburgh Castle and, behind us, Calton Hill. I've never seen a pyrotechnics show of that calibre in person before.

After midnight we beat the crowds to a pub in Old Town to warm our toes and dance a little. Then I waited another half hour at the chippy for a kebab and chips at 3am, but it was totally worth it! All around, a really amazing event, with a fantastic musical lineup (it was hard to choose), and a memorable finale. I even bought a souvenir t-shirt, and that's kind of unusual for me.

I wish you and yours the best year ahead. I foresee 2014 being truly exciting!

Cheers,
Kate xx

P.S. Things may quiet down a wee bit on the blog over the coming couple of weeks, since I'll be hopping a flight back home to Wisconsin dark-and-early tomorrow morning. But I'll try to keep up! ;)