Buen Ano!

That's how the Italians say, "Happy New Year." Pronounced correctly it sounds like Buenano pronounced after a few to many glasses of Presseco it sounds like BONANO!!!

Here's how we spent our New Year in Vicenza, Italy... With a few left over Christmas crackers and lots of wine.

Dinner was FIVE courses...it took 4 hours. We started at 8.30 and finished just before midnight. One price, EVERYTHING included...including the wine.

We then ran out to the main square just as midnight hit. All the Italians were going pretty crazy. The people on stage were saying a bunch of stuff in Italian. For the first few minutes we couldn't tell if we'd missed midnight or were still waiting...

What made it so hard was that there was no noticeable difference in the noise level. The Italians had been setting off fireworks since the night before and at midnight the noise level jumped up but mostly because EVEN MORE fireworks were going off. Apparently, there is no need to clear space for setting off a firework in Italy. You just light it, set it down, and hope the people around you are smart enough to get out of the way.

In the end, we decided that maybe we had missed it but either way we were going to celebrate.

Cue even more Presseco drinking and hugs and yelling and merriment. Noisy yelling phone calls were made to friends in London and the USA (where it was only 3 pm) and more than a few of you are probably still trying to decipher the New Year message I left at full volume.

Fireworks aside and jumping up and down complete, we headed back to the restaurant to dance the boogie oogie. When we left an hour later it was still complete mayhem outside. Fireworks still exploding in crowds and people still partying in the street.

Seeing as how we all left Italy with all our limbs and just some persistent ringing in the ears I'd say we passed the test.