New Years Eve 2015: Hogmanay in Edinburgh

Yesterday was an absolutely crazy, which is why this is the first blip in my blogging challenge. But the day I had made it so worth it!

Pictures from my last day in Dublin!

The day started when I woke up at 3am to go to the airport. I said goodbye to Dublin and to my family.

I flew back to Edinburgh and got back to my flat around 9 in the morning. I didn’t feel that tired, then I ate breakfast and immediately crashed.

I woke up a few hours later and my flatmate asked me if I wanted to go shopping. I had a few errands to do anyway, so we went out. We went all around Princes Street, where Edinburgh was preparing for the world-famous Hogmanay celebration. By 4pm we finished shopping but still hadn’t decided on plans for the evening.

It turned out one of my friends had a ticket for Hogmanay, but was stuck in the US because his flight was cancelled. I actually used his ticket and decided to go to the street party with my other flatmate.

In the early evening we hung around the flat and went to a friend’s flat to say hi before heading to the street party.

Hogmanay was about ten times more intense than I thought it was going to be. According to Google, about 80,000 people were in the centre. I would believe it. We got stuck in places where everyone was so packed together we couldn’t move.

hanging on to my flatmate’s hood so we didn’t get separated

We got to the party about 10 and we wandered around until midnight just trying to figure out what all was going on. If I were to ever go again, I would get there way earlier, because there was so much going on and so much to explore. I don’t think we even made it to half of the stages.

I was initially worried that it was going to be crowded in a bad way, but it was really fun. At one point these three guys came running up to us while I was trying to take a picture. They all had their arms linked and then kind of ran into us lightly. They then started screaming that they wanted me to take their picture because they saw my camera. I told them to pose, and here’s the picture. I just thought it was absolutely hilarious.

That was the kind of vibe. Everyone was really happy. You could have gone up to anyone and started a conversation or asked for a dance or whatever. It was just a really fun environment.

Of course one of the best parts was the fireworks. They set off fireworks every hour on the hour leading up to it. These were the baby fireworks at 11pm.

I thought those were super impressive, but it turned out to be nothing compared to the main show. The fireworks took up the whole sky. The show was about 2 or 3 city blocks long and must have gone up at least a couple hundred feet in the air. My pictures definitely do not do it justice.

We left shortly after midnight, because we were absolutely exhausted. I ended up staying awake for almost 24 hours. I spent the first day of the new year mostly recovering because of that. But I’m so glad I went out, because it was so much fun. It is amazing to live in a city as cool and weird as Edinburgh.

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