Words cannot begin to express the crush of people at Parliament Square on New Year's Eve.

Lisa and I woke up around 7:30 or so that evening. After taking long, luxurious showers, we dressed and headed down to the area near the Westminster tube station, which was actually quite a feat given that there was a Tube strike still going on. The throng of humanity already there was simply stunning:

I've really tweaked the levels of these pictures in Adobe Photoshop so that you can (hopefully) see the unbelievable mass of people in Parliament Square this evening. This was still quite early - just after 10pm by my watch - and the crowd would grow even larger as midnight approached. If you look carefully at the background in the third picture (directly above), you can see that Westminster Bridge itself is jammed full of people.

But then - just as we'd arrived at our destination - Lisa said those four little words that can drive a man insane: "I need to pee!"

Off we went in search of a toilet. We asked several constables where one might be, and each one pointed roughly in the direction of Norway. We walked and walked up Whitehall. I made myself giggle as we passed Downing Street, thinking about how much fun it would be to pee on the door of Number 10, "just for the hell of it". Unfortunately, the IRA screwed up my plans, as their stupid bombs made the British authorities install hardcore iron gates at both ends of Downing Street. On and on we walked.., past Trafalgar Square, past Charing Cross, past Chatham, past Maidstone, past Margate and into the North Sea... where we decided to skip the Norway trip and just pee with the fishes.

OK, OK, I'm kidding. We didn't walk to the North Sea. But it sure felt like it. Government buildings filled the area, so many streets (side streets especially) were closed to pedestrian traffic, presumably for anti-terror reasons, but I'm sure to keep the crowd of 150,000+ people from peeing all over the Ministry of Silly Walks Building as well. We eventually found the toilets, of course... and the line from hell to use them:

Never was I happier to be a man. Our line moved at a great clip, and I was in and out before poor Lisa had even moved five feet. And she was lucky - I snapped the above picture whilst she was inside doing her business; the queue literally mushroomed as she was inside. That little girl in the back of the line with her "mum" is probably #873rd in line. Good luck with that!

By this time we had walked about halfway between the Westminster and Embankment Tube stations, so decided to walk down the embankment towards Westminster, so as to get closer to the fireworks. Here's some random pics I took during the walk:

Here's a funny thing: whilst the clock was ticking down towards midnight, the occasional firework would go off towards the river. I could never figure out if they were "official" fireworks or not - they seemed far too large to be the ones you can buy as a "civilian", but there also seemed to be no pattern as to how they went off... the organizers didn't set off a single firework every five minutes or what have you.

Anyway, I have this annoying habit of screaming either "America, man!" or "Play some Lee Greenwood, man!" as loudly and as rednecky as I can any time fireworks go off. It was while one of those random rockets was exploding that I screamed, "Play some Lee Greenwood, man!", which made the pair of ladies next to us giggle like schoolgirls. Lisa started talking to them, and come to find out, they're both from Florida but are living in London! Cool, huh? Lisa made some new friends that she chatted with whilst we waited for the fireworks to begin. By the way, their names were Lara and Amy, and they were pretty cool:

From left to right: Lisa, Lara and Amy

And the fireworks begin!

Check out the fireworks for yourself with these videos. They require Windows Media Player 9 or higher and Internet Explorer to view. If you'd prefer to download the videos for later viewing - or see nothing but two blank windows below, as you might with Mozilla Firefox - click here to download the videos to your computer (5.20MB, zipped). Listen closely and you can hear me sing a Tom Jones song at one point during the videos... he was knighted that day, so it was big news in the UK:

So yes, the fireworks were awesome! But then it was all over and there was one massive crowd to deal with. It actually reminded me of New Orleans during Mardi Gras in that the crowd is so large and the streets so jam-packed that you have no choice in what direction you move: you just go with the flow, man. Here's some pics after the crowd had thinned out a little bit:

It was insane! And since Lisa and I were just kind of pushed along the streets, we had no idea of where the hell we were or where we were going! Then she started that rant again:" I've gotta pee!" Dear Lord... here we are surrounded by 5,000 cops on horseback and 150,000 drunks and she needs to pee! That was a pretty tall order - it's after midnight (duh!) so there's not a lot open. London is full of CCTV cameras all over the place on a normal day but this night we had CCTV and hundreds of cops looking in every direction - so peeing in a dark corner was not an option for anyone. As Lisa keeps telling me that she needs to pee, I start looking around and notice that a fair number of girls in the crowd are looking around too... so even if we do find somewhere, the line will be a mile (sorry, it's kilometer now) long!

Well, after taking a few turns away from the crowd, we somehow ended up on The Strand, where what did my eyes behold but... an open pub! The small crowd at the door seemed to be cheesed about the £1 cover charge, but before Lisa could open her purse I tossed the bouncer a £2 coin and we were in! Lisa enjoyed the "most refreshing pee ever" while I hooked myself up with another ale - just what I needed at that point. And another ale begat another, and another. But to tell you the truth, we were "perfectly drunk" that night... not out of control, not hurling on London's streets, not getting the US embassy involved. We were tipsy, yet perfectly fine... maybe not to drive, but hey - that's what the Tube passes are for!

I don't remember much of the Tube ride home. The only thing I know for sure is that I took a picture of my second favorite woman in the Charing Cross Tube station:

For some reason, the bar at the Metropole is open until 4am. I noticed this as we walked through the lobby. Lisa was done for the evening, but you should have seen the look on her face when I told her I was going downstairs to have another beer! It was absolutely priceless, that "have you completely lost your mind?" look. She said not a word. She didn't have to. The look said it all. But hey, it was still "peanut butter jelly time" in my world, so I went down to the bar and quaffed a Boddington's before drifting off in that most comforting of sleeps - the drunken slumber!

End of Part 3 of Day 5. Click here to go to Days 6 & 7!