A Lot of Late Nights

It's a good thing Derek and I got caught up on our sleep while we were home, because we've been doing a record of late nights now that we're back in Edinburgh!  Those who know us well know we're pretty careful about bedtime.  I'm a 10pm type of girl, Derek's more 10:30 or 11, and so we're usually trying to sleep by 11, and that way we can wake up around 7:30 or 8 and start the day.  But not lately!  Starting with New Years Eve (as expected), there has been a wave of late night activity and its been pretty fun.

Hogmanay, the New Years celebrations in Edinburgh, were amazing.  100 000 people gathered in a ticketed street party along Princes Street and the Mound to ring in the New Year with a Carnival, four concert stages, a ceilidh in the park, spectacular fireworks around the castle and a laser light show after midnight.  I thought it was very cool that a small number of fireworks went off at 11pm to celebrate the New Year in western Europe.  After the fireworks we made our way back to the flats, where two more parties were raging.  It was a great night.

But that's not where it ends.  School doesn't start for us until Monday, so those of us who came back to the flats early/never left have been spending the evenings chatting, playing board games and watching Celebrity Big Brother (which I am completely addicted to!).  There's been a few bottles of wine drunk, red holiday microwave popcorn snacked on, some heated games of Cluedo (the name for Clue here) and a rather fun taste test of Dove chocolate, which I brought back from Canada, versus Galaxy chocolate, which is the UK brand name for Dove.  Galaxy won by a landslide.  It was so much smoother and sweeter, and so so good.  

We also celebrated the upcoming birthday of a housemate this week by staying up past midnight until the big day arrived.  That was pretty late by our standards, but our friends headed upstairs shortly after midnight to continue the festivities and quietly partied until 4am.  While we've gone back to our early-ish bedtime, Derek and I have continued the fun by playing our first games of Cribbage in years -- we just start early and end before 10.  And now we can wake up at 7:30 feeling rested rather than exhausted (in theory, anyway).