NYE 2010

New Year's Eve was pretty fun even though I didn't have a hot thing to kiss this year.  I was with Italians the whole night which is always fun.

Around 6 pm I went to my friend Giovanna's place for dinner and drinks.  She had a ton of people visiting.  I was the only American and there was one Spaniard and everyone else was from Italy.  Duke came, of course, and was showered with affection.  They were all incorrigible and could not stop giving him treats.  The little bastard was spoiled rotten and consequently had diarrhea the next day.

After the Italians, I ran over too Plaza Catalunya to meet Reina and her beau.  The Spanish New Year's tradition is to eat 1 grape per second for the first 12 seconds of the new year.  I failed horribly at this.  First off, the grapes I was sold were not the seedless New Year's grapes...they were gigantic globe grapes with seeds.  Second, half of them were inedible and squished.  No regrets, however, as this made for an even funnier first time attempt at this tradition.

Next was food.  We were all a little hungry so squirmed through the crowded streets until we found an open tapas place.  Everything was fried and covered in oil, per usual.  We all went home after that at about 2 am.

As soon as I got in my pjs and snuggled under the blankets, my Italian roommate called and coerced me into coming out again. I shuffled over to the Hard Rock Cafe half asleep.  We wandered around La Rambla for a while, hung out at a café, then headed over to Raval again since she and her friend were hungry. We ran into another Italian from the first party of the night at a kebab place and he took us to a bar that was open until 6 am.  They had a DJ playing American rock fro the '50s.  The music was good, the people were beautiful, and the drinks were free, but I was spent and we headed home around 5:30.

Needless to say, Duke and I laid in bed all of Saturday and vegged out on Rome.