New Year, New Country
In October, Pedro turned to me and said, "Pick a country and we'll go there for your birthday." Immediate whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. Do we go somewhere with snow? Get warm? East? West?
At first I picked Iceland. It's been on my list for awhile, and I figured January might have a greater chance for us to see some northern lights. However, once we compiled a list of things we wanted to see and stuff we wanted to do, we realized winter was not going to be the best time for us to visit, so we pivoted.
Pedro's always wanted to visit Spain, see his roots. And I thought it'd be great to visit a more Summery country when it's not so hot. Barcelona it is! And this trip was going to be different, as in an actually being a holiday. Relaxing, meandering, enjoying the sights instead of our usual GO GO GO. We have a big habit of mapping out every second, and while it's great to cover so much ground in a short amount of time, we end up exhausted! So this time, we are staying in one city for a week, taking day trips if we want. Looking at flights and pricing, we got flights out of Edinburgh on the 31st, returning on my birthday. The train/bus trip from Glasgow to Edinburgh Airport was only £25, well worth the £££ we save not flying from Glasgow.
The hotel I found was on the bus line from the Barcelona Airport and had the metro on the corner, which connects us to everything easily and quickly. We got to our hotel at around 7pm, and quickly changed to find the nearest New Year's Eve festivities. I read there would be fireworks at one of the large plazas downtown, and the hotel receptionist confirmed there would be a drone and firework show starting at 11p, but people start lining up before 9p. So we headed to the plaza to check it out.
The plaza was indeed huge, and through two tall pillars, led down to the Magic Fountain Magic Fountain of Montjuïc. There were already people lining the edges of the closed off street, sitting on planter ledges and curbs. We hadn't eaten dinner, and still needed to find some grapes, so we decided to quickly find a convenience store and come back to claim a spot for the show. Surprisingly, we were back in our pre-scouted spot in less than 30 minutes with sandwiches, water, and 12 good-luck-New-Year's grapes for each of us. Many people were slowly filling in until it was absolutely packed. We kept counting down the minutes, feet sore from our day of traveling, but figuring we've made it this far so might as well stay for a firework show. Just before 11p, there was announcement in Catalan, Spanish, and then English, informing us the show was about to start, and when we heard bells it signaled midnight, followed by 12 bells to signal each grape to eat. (Basically if you can stuff all 12 grapes in your mouth after midnight and before 12:00:12, it's said to be good luck). 11p came and went. 11:30p, 11:45p..."are we sure there's a show before Midnight?" but then finally, at 11:50p we saw a hoard of drones fly in over the Magic Fountain and start forming shapes along to music. It wasn't what I expected at first, it was a very mellow tune with the drones forming different sea creatures, and then abstract shapes. When the fireworks joined, the show really took off, with a lights from the drones in sync with pyrotechnics. We heard the bells, we ate our grapes, and continued to enjoy the show for another couple minutes.
Out feet were aching, our knees locked up, but we got to experience a big city New Year's Eve in a foreign country! ...but that comes with the price of a big crowd. We quickly realized there was no room to go back out the wy we came. We had to follow the flow of the crowd, and it still took out about 30-40 mintues to leave the plaza area and have some breathing room. Pedro was on guard and I was getting claustrophobic, as we were pressed up against others and some were pushing, but we thankfully avoided the rowdiest people. Instead of trying to go back through the plaza, we kept going away from it to the thinner cwords, just going to the next metro or train stop. However due to it being New Year's, the metro was closed and busses were rerouting. So after walking around a big loop, trying to find the right pick up, we gave up and made our way back to the plaza, thinking we'd walk back to the hotel if needed. Luckily, by then it had mostly cleared out (and shout out to city of Barcelona workers already working to clean up the trash) and the plaza's metro was reopened. A quick train ride and we were back at our hotel a little after 2am. Tomorrow we're sleeping in. We're on holiday dammit.
