New Years!

New Years started off innocently enough with a delightful Canadian breakfast prepared by yours truly. I made pancakes from scratch and bought imported Canadian Maple syrup to use in conjunction with the pancakes. Jennie and Malin were thoroughly impressed by the volume of my pancakes because apparently they have never made pancakes with baking powder before so their pancakes always turned out like crepes.

In the afternoon we went shopping for the groceries required to make the extravagant taco/burrito dinner we had planned the previous night. In addition to ingredients we purchased more champagne and wine to enjoy with dinner and later on.

We prepared the most elaborate and fulfilling dinner in the hostel by a long-shot. We all ate until we were ready to burst and still had plenty of left overs for the next day. Shortly before dinner the hostel announced that they were suddenly going to start enforcing their "Strict No Alcohol Policy". This forced us to put a little bit of thought and ingenuity into the consumption of our wine and champagne.






After dinner we started the night out at Basement bar where all drinks were $4 and there was free vodka punch at 9PM. We had initially planned to not spend a lot of time at the basement bar but we really got into the $4 drinks and ended up staying until about 11:45 when we realized it was almost midnight and we needed to grab the champagne and get to Civic Square for the big countdown.




The champagne was retrieved from it's hiding spot in the room and we made a mad dash to the square. We found out when we arrived that no alcohol could be brought into the square so Jennie had the brilliant idea of burying it in a planter box just outside the square. When we finally got inside the square it was 12 seconds to midnight. We joined the crowd and immediately commenced the countdown.




After the countdown was over we listened to the band for a bit and then headed back out to retrieve our champagne from the ground. Luckily for us the champagne was still there. We drank it out of the bottle on the side of the ride before heading to another bar for more drinks.





We didn't spend much time at the last bar before making our way back to the hostel. On the way back to the hostel we stopped for burgers at a kebab shop and then spent 10 minutes talking to the guy at reception at our hostel before finally going to bed.





When we made our way back to the room Jennie and Malin were very concerned with my ability to not only get into bed but to remain in it through out the night given that I was in the top bunk. I did make it through the night though. I even took a picture on my laptop when I woke up because it was under my pillow for some reason.

Happy New Years!