Since my future sister in law had to work all day on the 30th and till noon in 31, we decided to skip our bad habits and not work ourselves blindly till the new year. Many people can’t fathom spending New Year’s Eve without a lot of food and preparing it for the last 2 days of the year at least. Well, you can and we just tested this option.
Instead of leaving her in the kitchen to cook ‘just a little something’, we dragged her out of the house and we ate at a nice Austrian restaurant in the port. Good food and huge portions, so big that I had to take half of my portion home as a ‘doggie bag’.
Then we stayed and chat, while also remembering to phone our families back home, so that we can send them our best wishes.
At 10 PM we got out of the house again and went to the Centre of Fuengirola, a small sea resort near Malaga. We’d spend the last hours of 2011 in the street with all the poeple there. Since we’re on Costa del Sol, the weather is amazingly nice, so we had something like 16 degrees Celsius, a great temperature to stay outside.
Here is a huge ‘Christmas tree’ that’s made of lights and a metal frame. Getting some natural trees for this event is not really easy, since they usually have palm trees. And these are not looking too good when decorated.
This is the CityHall or Ayuntamiento, as the Spanish people call it and the small plaza in front of it. We were there 2 hours prior to midnight and thought it’s gonna be pretty lonely. Fortunately, half an hour later a small band started singing and people were gathering in big numbers.
This is a detail from the Christmas tree.
And here is the band. They played various Spanish songs, very nice to hear and appropriate for the occasion. The music was so engaging some people even danced.
A lady and her dog were watching from the side.
And some young women were so cute with their sparkly hats, we just had to take their picture.
Here we have the CityHall nicely lit:
There’s a nice tradition here: when we enter the new year we’re supposed to eat grapes – one bite for each month of the next year – and also make wishes.
We had our own grapes with us (plus champagne and glasses), but the people who organized the event gave us all grapes compote.
At 12 we kissed each other and wished a great year, then drank from our own champagne. Then we walked on the shore and went home to sleep.
It was a great New Year’s Eve and we were well rested.
I wish you all a great 2012 and thank you for visiting us.
