Happy New Year everyone! Bit delayed I know but January slipped by entirely too quickly. 2015 started in a great way, with a trip to England and then a whirlwind tour with a friend to Gibraltar, Spain and Portugal which started with a 7am flight to Gibraltar from London on January 1^st. Needless to say, we didn’t bother going to bed New Years Eve, what would have been the point?  So we powered through, slept on the flight and started 2015 with a day in Gibraltar. A subsequent post will follow with all the details of our Iberian peninsula tour, this post will be about New Years and the fun I had saying good bye to the horrible 2014 (although it was a good travel year!) and hello to 2015.

I have never been a fan of New Years. Everyone has such high expectations that it will be a great night and more often than not it falls flat, or is absolutely awful. So over the past few years I have made a point of traveling for New Years, at least that way it is guaranteed to be good because I’m traveling and there is nothing better than that!

This year, for the first time in years, I went to an actual New Years event and it was fantastic. The party was at the Southbank Centre in London, England and the party theme was vintage so we dressed up in 20s inspired outfits and headed out. Almost everyone else dressed up as well in outfits from various decades of the twentieth century.  I saw some tacky 80s, a really good Austin Powers, and lots of flappers.  The Southbank Centre itself is beautiful and a great place for an event. It is along the Thames near the London Eye and has a beautiful view over the Thames.

For the event, each floor or area had a different music or decade theme, downstairs was big band and ballroom dancing, another floor had a sixties party, in another room a DJ played guilty pleasure songs of the 80s and yet another had dance music and a DJ.

There were photo booths with props, an arcade with pinball machines and arcade games from the 80s, bars with various specialty drinks and the food theme was American food which included hot dogs and mac and cheese.  One of the girls we were with was a member of the Southbank Centre so we had a reserved table for the night on the top floor in the members’ only section. At midnight everyone went outside on the terrace to watch the fireworks over the Thames, they were amazing, best fireworks I have ever seen. They have fireworks every year over the Thames at the London Eye, although now they charge 10 pounds to watch them along the river as they close the area to traffic and have a band, but they were so fantastic they are worth it. From the terrace at the Southbank Centre we were so close ash from the fireworks fell on us.

After the fireworks we could hear Queen playing at the top of Big Ben so we listened to a song or two then went back inside for some more dancing until it shut down and it was time to head for the airport to start 2015 with a trip to the continent. What a great New Years Eve, and a fabulous start to 2015 which will hopefully be an amazing year full of much travel.