One of my favorite New Years memories was when I went to Barcelona, Spain for a week with 3 of my good friends. Our initial plans of partying like rock stars in the city for New Years Eve went bust when we realized our ‘hostel’ was about an hour train ride outside of the city and the train stopped running early in the evening. Oops. We were stuck.

Thankfully we were able to find a grocery store still open and picked up everything we needed for a fun night in: food, wine, a radio so we could hear the countdown to the new year, and grapes. Yes, grapes. We found out that the Spanish have a tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight to bring good luck for the new year.

So, fast forward to 11:59pm. We are all sitting around the table huddled over the radio waiting for it to start counting down in Spanish. We didn’t really know what we were doing so when we heard something that sounded like a countdown we all started shoving grapes into our mouths.

Exhibit A:

However, almost as quickly as we shoved the grapes in our mouths, we all started spitting them out!

Exhibit B:

These were not the grapes we were used to at home, these were SEEDED grapes. When you are not used to crunchy bits in your grapes, it is rather shocking to bite down on them. Needless to say it was one of the funniest moments of my life. Our attempt of joining in on local tradition totally failed, but had a blast trying.

On that note, I wish you all a happy seedless 2011! Until next year (aka tomorrow).