Ok so I know I should probably post about “Baby’s first Christmas” but there’s a lot of pictures and frankly, the story isn’t as exciting as her first new years eve, so look to my Facebook page for an album on that one. In March.
For New Years Eve, Jon’s parents took us to Prague. My family is Czech and Slovak so this is like the motherland for me. In fact, Ivy’s great great great Grandfather came from Prague (Dad, if you are reading this can you confirm that I in fact have the correct number of greats in there?). My family history aside, it’s an amazing old city, with buildings that were built in like the 12 and 1300’s. Our hotel was in the Old Town Square, which is one of the two places people gather to ring in midnight.
We booked a table in the restaurant downstairs,called U Zlate Konvice, which was an old roman cellar. I saved a card for Ivy’s memory book and it boasts “Roman Cellar – Grilled Meat- Pilsner Urquell – The Best Moravian Wine”.The decor was, uh, interesting there was lots of taxidermy and weapons. We had dressed Ivy in her party pajama’s figuring she would just fall asleep. She was in her stroller drifting off, when a band came in and started playing some traditional Czech music. She was still drifting off, despite the fact that there was a 3-piece band playing which included an accordion. Then we noticed the people sitting across for us were all smiling in our direction, and Ivy had just sat herself up in the stroller and was swaying along with the music. She was hilarious!
We decided to go into the square to count down to midnight. I had wisely ran the stroller up to the hotel room to trade it for the baby carrier. I’d like to mention here the hotel was in such an old building there was no elevator to our room. My father in law counted 107 steps. It made me not feel so bad about the excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages and pork products at every meal.I strapped Ivy into the ergo, which was easier than carrying her up and down all those steps anyway. By the time we were back down to the restaurant and on our dessert, Ivy was passed out happily on my chest, despite the fact that the band was back and people were at this point very festive. Part of the menu included a small bottle of champagne, so we brought this outside with us. The open container laws basically don’t exist there. Earlier that day (I mean like 2:30 in the afternoon early) I had seen a drunken band of students passing around a bottle of Jaegermeister.
Now I’ve never actually done anything like this for New Years Eve – Times Square always seemed a bit to manic and annoying to actually be fun. So out we ventured into the square and it was packed. I mean so incredibly packed that we could barely make it outside the door of the restaurant. We basically parked ourselves there and waited for the big countdown. At this point Ivy woke up and was all “Hey is there some sort of party happening here? Whats going on?”
Then it was midnight and champagne corks were popping and fireworks were going off all around us, literally. Haaaaappy New yeeeeear…
It was pretty insane. Lets just say I bet the Prague ER has to deal with a lot of alcohol poisoning and burns (from the fireworks) when the revelers wake up on New Years Day. It got a little crazy crowd wise, but at least they were considerate drunks, and everyone gave us plenty of room when they saw I had a baby strapped to my chest. I will say that I’m pretty sure Ivy was probably the youngest reveler in that crowd.
We headed back downstairs for the final course that came after dessert. It was pork! 2 kinds; ham and roast sucking pig. It was yummy. We finished our champagne and Ivy stayed up to socialize a bit.
We stayed at the restaurant for a while, hanging out with our new Norwegian friends until it was time for bed.
It was so amazing ringing in Ivy’s first New Year in such an old city. She will have great memories in her baby book for us to tell her about when she’s older. It was one of the best New Years Eve celebrations I’ve ever had.
A Baby Grows in Brooklyn 