I've always watched the televised broadcast of the New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square with bewilderment. Why would so many people want to spend the last hours of the year packed shoulder to jowl with a huge crowd of drunks. I felt claustrophobic just watching those people.

So I wasn't too keen on trying the Madrid equivalent of that experience: New Year's Eve in Puerto Del Sol, a large plaza three blocks away from our hotel. But how could we be so close and not give it a shot?

We went to Puerto del Sol before 8:00 just to check it out. The crowd was sparse, and we able to stand on the square watching the light show play off the clock tower of the building across from the plaza and listen to the generic dance music thump away.

After a scramble to find some place to eat that wasn't closed or charging 100 euros for a special New Year's Eve menu (we ended up with take-out gyros), we took it easy in our rooms until 11:30. We walked to a half block of Puerto Del Sol, to the edge of the crowd, and staked out a place within sight of the clock tower. Soon there were as many people behind us as there were in front, but the crowd was exuberant. No one was out of control or obnoxious. People dress up in silly masks or wigs on New Year's Eve, so we checked out families of Elvises, people wearing purple tinsel mullet wigs, people in Bart Simpson masks or people with shaggy afro wigs. I wore a flame wig I picked up in the afternoon at the Plaza Mayor.

We also had our grapes. The tradition is to eat a grape a second in the last twelve seconds of the year to ensure a year of prosperity. But since there was no countdown, simply the hands of the clock moving together and corks flying off of cava bottles and people kissing and people cheering, we just kind of pushed them into our mouths as midnight approached. Fireworks went off and we watched the lights of the fireworks reflect off the windows of the buildings. After the fireworks, people moved on to find a party and we went back to our hotel.

A terrific way to start a New Year.