Happy New Year!

It's the new year, so I figured this is a good time as any to make my first post. Ever.

It was my first year celebrating NYE in Brisbane. I've always been in Singapore for the festivities, but this year I wanted to see how Brisbane parties. I must say it was pretty crowded in the city. Damien and I avoided the entire SouthBank area and beyond at first because the crowds were just massive. Our original NYE plans fell through and our friends were all over the place, so we decided to do our own thing and came up with our new basic plan: dinner, drinks, fireworks. Sounds good to me.

We went to the Valley for dinner. Wagamama at the Emporium was our choice. That end of the Valley was a little quiet and the restaurants were all closing early. The Brunswick Street end of the Valley was a different story. All the clubs seemed to be open and there were lots of people milling around by the time we were making a move back to the City.

The City was full of people, probably people who would eventually end up at South Bank to see fireworks. We went to the Casino first and it was bursting with people. After seeing the crowd and deciding there was no way we'd make it to the bar in the next year, we went to Jorge on George for some drinks. It was the best idea we had all night. Good cocktails, great music and lots of (but not too many) people all guzzied up for a night of partying.

At about 11.40pm, we made our way to South Bank to scope out a nice spot to stand. There were masses of people, but it wasn't as packed as I had anticipated. Maybe South Bank itself would have been crowded, but we found a spot on the Victoria Bridge.

And then at midnight, the fireworks lit up the sky.

It was so pretty...

So that's the story of my first NYE in Brisbane. No horror stories. No nasty surprises. All I can say, is that the best plan is a basic one and the best company is of the special kind. Happy New Year!