We had bought tickets for the big Hogmanay celebration that occurs on Princes Street. Ronnie recommended New Edinburgh Rendezvous, a Chinese restaurant, as a close location for dinner before the celebrations.

It had snowed during the night but did not stay yet the weather was still quite cold. After dinner as we walked around Princes Street waiting for events to start, it was very windy and rainy. At 10:45, they announced the street party was cancelled. One guy near us was irrate proclaiming, “Nothing in Scotland gets cancelled for the weather.” There was a huge squeeze of people leaving and it seemed to take forever to get out of the gated area. I was worried Sidney was going to suffocate because people were pressed so closely together. Some guy tried picking Scott’s pocket. He wasn’t nearly as good as the girls in Paris.

No buses were running and all the taxis we tried were full so we walked back to Ronnie and Kim’s — about 2 miles — very quickly because I needed to pee. We watched New Years celebrations on the telly and drank the champagne we had brought with us from Paris.