New Years

We were a little disappointed to discover that New Years is a bit of a non event in Vancouver - no fireworks, no concerts.  Most people here seem to pay $50+ to go into clubs all night, we weren't so keen on this plan.  We decided to to find a nice restaurant to celebrate the end of 2009 and join people in Granville Street to see 2010 in.

We started our evening at Al Porto Ristorante in Gastown.  Here we had a nice Italian dinner and a few drinks.  The place was very busy, everywhere we pretty much booked out being new years eve.

It was a rainy miserable night so when we finished dinner we weren't sure whether to head up to Granville Street or find somewhere dry to wait till closer to midnight.  There were already a few people gathering in Granville street at 10pm so we decided to wander around taking it in.  The whether got worse before it got better and we were both cold and tired.  Fortunately there were people dancing around with drums providing entertainment and a little bit of warmth.  It was also fun watching the police 'manage' a few people that had started the night a little early.

The major flaw with having an unofficial countdown in the middle of Vancouver is that the clock doesn't have a second hand.  This made the countdown rather disorganized.  There were at least 3 different countdowns separated by several minutes as people noticed their watches.  The one around us must've been about right, the clock hand moved to midnight at about the right time.

We were both pretty tired after a long day after a snog and making a mess of Auld Lang Syne we headed home to bed.