In Which We Toast to Auld Lang Syne

At 10:00 last night John popped his head into my room to announce he was all done with his calls to the states and maybe we should find some food and see about this whole New Year's Eve thing. We both kind of sighed. Celebrating New Year's can sometimes feel like a major burden - both of us had been worried all day about making it all the way to midnight without desperately wanting to be asleep in our own beds. Luckily we had hit upon a brilliant plan: eating a super late dinner. This way, our bodies would be tricked into thinking it was actually dinner time and not two hours PAST our normal eating hour, thereby enabling us to ring in 2009 with very little effort on our parts.

But where to go? What to do? Our extraordinarily vague plan was to "eat" and then "maybe check out that jazz club our hotel guy used to own that is apparently close by." We rallied our cantankerous selves to the occasion by dressing ourselves in festive garb. Check it:

John sports his sassy new glasses, newly dry cleaned shirt and his blazing blazer.


And, erm, you can't exactly see my festive sparkly belt, but I AM wearing sparkly eyeliner.


So out we ventured. We automatically turned our feet towards Tamam, our absolute favorite dinner spot approximately 20 steps away from our hotel home's front door. It was suspiciously dark, and in a state of increasing panic we pushed our noses against the window just to make double, triple sure that it was actually, truly closed. Crap!

In a daze, we turned our feet to the harbor front. We quickly devised a list of other restaurants we knew of (that wouldn't give us food poisoning) that might be open. Options were limited, and we quickly determined that we really, really should have made a reservation. 20 minutes and three restaurants later, I was pretty sure we'd end up back at the hotel with that bottle of almost empty Retsina, dining on the piece of chocolate cake in our fridge and finishing off the chocolate Christmas mouse we had yet to partake of.

With one last option and with no great hope, we asked the last open spot we could find on the harbor if they had a table for two. It was pretty packed - expectations were low. But then! Wonder of wonders!! Hiding amongst the celebratory patrons was an empty table right in the corner where the people watching was at its best.

Giddy from our coup and a bit loopy from hunger, John and I took our seats and immediately set out to order half the menu and some toasting beverages from our new favorite waiter in the world, the Albanian Angel, decked out in a blinking Santa hat. John and I both decided to order concoctions with names to start the night off - apparently, Angel was sorry to inform us, I couldn't order a Black Russian because the bar couldn't handle specialty cocktails due to the volume of patrons that night. Undettered, I put in my request for white wine. John had been about to order a Rusty Nail - curious, he asked if he could still get a whiskey. Angel said of course! John then asked if the bartender could put some Drambuie in with the whiskey? Oh absolutely!! Drink orders taken, Angel flew off to fulfill our requests, and I was left wondering if I could have procured a Black Russian by requesting vodka with kahlua instead.

But no matter! As you can see below, they came out just FINE.



And then what?? Things got pretty silly between drinking on an empty stomach, our flitting Angel, and food that was, if not good, at least mediocre to fine (i.e. we didn't feel the need to fob it off on stray cats). The New Year rang in with the live band striking up a festive tune and fireworks erupting over the harbor, and I discovered John looks especially good when photographed in black and white, even MORE especially with those new GLASSES.






We tottered our way home around 2 a.m., taking the long way back in an attempt to fulfill the only other item we had on our itinerary that evening, i.e. the finding of the Fagote, the jazz club we had been so determined to patronize. We obviously did not find it.

We did, however, end up eating that Chocolate Mouse.















Happy New Year!