In 1999 / 2000 during that millenium craze (I don’t care if the millenium started 2001, the hyped up party year was the 1999 / 2000 one) I visited my best friend in London. I repeated that last year and let me tell you, New Year’s in London is just awesome.
There’s simply no comparison to my hometown, where drunk and obnoxious people (as opposed to drunk and cheerful people I’ve encountered in the UK) try to hurt random bystanders with their fireworks.
Unfortunately my friend no longer resides in London and my initial plan to fly over and rent a hotelroom fell flat. At least, he’s not going to accompany me and I don’t know if I’ll have a good time all by myself. So right now the plan is to stay in our hometown and party here…
Does anybody have a good idea what to do? What are the European Dopers doing on New Year’s Eve? Any chance I could tag along?
I was only in London once for New Year’s. We went to a pub in Clapham. It was good.
Optihut I’d invite you to Dublin for New Year’s but #1, Dublin sucks for New Year’s and #2, I won’t be there anyway … I’m going back to visit my folks in DC.
Best New Year’s I’ve had in recent years, though, was with Twisty in West Belfast in 2001/2, I think.
Count me on the boring crowd - on NYE, I’ll be on call for work, so I can’t do anything truly festive, for fear I’ll be paged and be too uhhh… happy to fix whatever broke.
Well, I haven’t been to the Times Square while I was in New York, so I don’t know. The two New Years’ I had in London were fantastic, because:
A) There are no private fireworks - there’s only the state organized fireworks at midnight. This is a good thing, because as I said I usually have to dodge rockets and other stuff in my hometown when I’m out on New Year’s Eve.
B) The streets were packed with people, who were cheerful and celebrating. This is a very nice atmosphere to be walking around in.
C) While all the pubs closed at 10 pm during the millenium, it was possible to find a couple of bars during the last New Year’s Eve to pass the time till midnight.
It’ll probably be like most of our more recent NYEs - we’ll watch TV and fall asleep early. We’ve been invited to my sister’s, butI don’t want to be driving 90+ minutes home with all them drunks on the road.
I’ll wander down the end of the street and watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks on the harbour, as usual. There are normally two displays - one at 9.00pm for the families with young children and then one at midnight.
Las Vegas does a great fireworks…they shoot them off the roofs of 10 casinos up and down the Strip simultaneously so no matter where you are - on the Strip, or from a distance - you can see them. They also close off the Strip at about 9:00 PM so people start pouring out of the casinos and partying on the street til well after midnight.
I, however, will be home on my balcony, watching them from afar, and then most likely be in bed asleep by 12:30.
New Year’s Eve? You mean my birthday? My 50th birthday?
Nothing.
I’ll be going out with friends during the day, for some kind of outing (a museum trip, perhaps? last year we went to the Mutter Museum [medical oddities]) and then out for pizza. I’ll be home by 8 or so at which point, uh…
Well, crosses fingers, hopes seasonal job will become nonseasonal, ergo hoping to be working. I’ve contemplated coming out to my parents on New Years, making the resolution to have more courage. Not sure yet. Depends on how miserable christmas is.
Other than that, going to watch the 7 pm fireworks at First Night in Boston, then picking up a friend at work and getting nicely drunk with as many of friends as possible, then hopefully kissing my as of yet non existant SO at midnight.
