any great suggestions for spending new years eve in madrid? Think mixed family group of night owls ... looking for restaurant plus other things to do ...

i want to know the same thing. i'm coming from new york and will be there for about a week. i hear the puerts del sol is pretty hot that night. i am also down to meet up with your gang of night owls and go hooting through the town.

I think there are lots of us here that are planning on being in Madrid at New Year's.
Anyone planning on meeting up and having a Madridman website get-together?

Wouldn't that be great!! If you can arrange it, please come back here to this thread and tell us all about it. Even if you don't, please come back here and let us know what you did during New Year's Eve in Madrid!!

Happy New Year, Group!!!

Saludos, MadridMan

Isn't Puerto de Sol supposed to be THE place to be? I remeber someone telling me about it being a giant party, having to eat grapes or something (and being felt up in an unsuccessful attempt to pickpocket him).

yes....it's La puerta del Sol. The square is packed to the limit a la Times Square style. People are all drinking and throwing confetti and firecrackers up in the air. It's almost a scary (read: unsafe) place to be just because it's just a wild crowd. If you have ever seen the NYC celebration on TV then that's what it looks like. Only not as many polis around. Last time I was there for that was New Year's '92/'93. I believe one of our UK based board members said that it's been broadcast on the TVE channel....hope I get to see it this year!


Leche

[This message has been edited by Leche (edited 12-22-2000).]

Sorry. typo. one of these days I will learn to type well enough to look at the screen and catch my mistakes. For now it is usually two or three lines of "edited by Nicole...."

Well, I didn´t see any other MM board members (not that I would recognize them anyway). It was the most awesome New Year´s Eve celebration I have ever been.

My girlfriend and I started around 9pm. We wanted something to eat but she wanted a nice sit down dinner. Most of the restaurants that night had a New Year´s menu. Without any reservations we finally found a restaurant near Plaza Santa Ana that had a menu for 10.000ptas/person (yikes!!). It included salad, chorizo a la brasa (yumm!!), pimientos a la brasa, your choice of steak, piglet or lamb, a bottle of wine, dessert, coffee, a glass of cava, and 12 grapes. It was good, but I thought overpriced.

We finished dinner around 11pm, headed to our hotel (HR Tijcal near Plaza Mayor (I´ll post some feedback on that later)). We saw that there was still space on Puerta del Sol, so I went to get my camera to take some pictures. I took the pictures and it started getting crowded, so I went back to leave my camera and get the bottle of cava that I left chilling in the fridge (room balcony). We made our way through the crowd and found a spot near the big Xmas tree, with a view of the clock and the Tio Pepe sign. It was 11:45 already.

Come 11:59 it was so noisy that I missed the campanadas, and we started eating the grapes when we saw the "Feliz 2001" sign light up. I thought that these grapes were supposed to be seedless. Well, anyway, we opened the bottle and toasted for a happy new year, century, and millenium.

Around 12:15am, a drunk that was about 15 feet from us started doing his impersonation of "Rivaldo" and started kicking bottles around. Then all the other drunks started throwing bottles at him and that´s how the bottle fight broke. It took about 10 minutes for the police to show up, and another half hour to get the bottles to stop flying.

All in all, it was an awesome experience and I hope it won´t be the last here in Madrid.

Happy New Year, jefe7.

I was listening to the Puerta del Sol festivities via TeleMadrid radio right here at Madridman.com. It sounded like a huge, raucous crowd at Midnight! I tried picturing the whole scene, and am glad to read an account from an actual participant/survivor. Sounds like it was an awesome experience.

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a happy and safe new year´s celebration...Well here I am in Madrid and still recovering from the festivities...We ate a very large meal with my in'laws, ate the grapes at midnight and then were off to Huertas, where we danced till 5am at a place called La Cartuja, if anyone is into a good disco, this place was cool...after, we finished off the night with chocolate con churros at Chocolateria San Gines...needless to say, i was exhausted but happy...anyway, As I said, i hope you all had a great new year!!!!