New Years Eve should be spent, I think, with the very best of friends...and if that means you have the opportunity to celebrate it in an fabulous Spanish city with a reputation for partying then all the better...
We spent the day picking up the few bits and pieces we still needed for the meal, browsing through the markets and picking the freshest salmon from the fishmonger and watching her fillet it in front of us...choosing lemons and vegies from the grocer and stopping for a coffee or two along the way.
Getting home we popped the first bottle of champagne at 3pm to toast in the Australian new year...the first of several toasts for this cosmopolitan bunch.
We set the table with plenty of festive candles and asked friends to bring around some extra chairs. the scene was set for a cozy dinner party for eight...
Our little dinner was made up of the french and the spanish and the chillian and the english, and the australian - with Richard and I making up the english speaking component. The boys had worked hard to put together the menu...little tapas morsels to start - croquettas, spanish omlette and an array of cheese - eaten the french way of course, with a torn off piece of french baguette...salmon with a creamy dill sauce, crispy roast potatoes and green beans made up the main and a choice of apple crepe cake or flan for dessert (i chose both of course). We drank, we spoke at least three different languages and at midnight we almost choked on grapes...
In Spain it is tradition to eat 12 grapes - one per second in the seconds immediately after midnight. The countdown is on tv telling you when to eat them. The whole country stops for grapes...and let me tell you...its a tricky little exercise. Still chewing the last of the pips I kissed my friends, the very best of them and the very newest of them...and welcomed in the new year before heading to a bar to dance the rest of the night away...
2011 has started with a bang with people I love and in a country foreign and wonderful...hopefully those spanish grapes will do the trick and will bring me all the luck in the world.
Till next time...
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