Greatest Places to Ring In the New Year

 

New Year's Eve Greatest Places to Ring In the New Year

Where will you be on New Year's Eve? Here are some ideas for amazing places to visit when you really want to usher in the new year in a memorable way. Let the countdown begin!

Millennium Island, Kiribati

New Year's Eve Millennium Island, Kiribati

Though some may argue over the exact spot, Millennium Island in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, just east of the international date line, is recognized by many as being the first place in the world to see the sun rise every Jan. 1. (The island, formerly called Caroline Island, got its new name during the build-up to the 2000 New Year.) Unfortunately, the island is in danger of disappearing due to rising seas, as it is only 6 meters above water level. Kiribati's island chain also includes Christmas Island, the world's largest coral atoll.

Paris

Paris

The Eiffel Tower is the place to be in Paris on New Year's Eve. At the stroke of midnight, fireworks light up the night and calls of “Bonne Année!” ring out along the Champs-Élyseés. Or for something different, set yourself up in the plaza in front of the Sacre Coeur Cathedral in Montmartre: You’ll get an unrivaled view over the entire City of Light. Don't forget to bring along a handful of papillottes , chocolate treats that pop when you unwrap them.

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Each Dec. 31, millions gather at Copacabana beach to watch a dazzling 20-minute display of pyrotechnics launched from 11 barges, each loaded with 1,200 fireworks. During the event, called Reveillon, fireworks exploding over the beach will be synchronized with sound effects, and this year, the logo for the 2016 Olympics will be unveiled. Four musical stages on the beach will get crowds pumped up early with plenty of live music.

London

London

On Dec. 31, Big Ben will officially ring in 2011 when it chimes at the stroke of midnight. That kicks off the traditional fireworks display behind the London Eye. The best viewing areas are across the river on the Victoria Embankment and on the Waterloo and Westminster bridges, which will be closed to car traffic around 6 p.m. Those who don't want to battle the crowds can catch the fireworks on the viewing screens in Parliament Square.

Edinburgh, Scotland

Edinburgh, Scotland

In Edinburgh, Hogmanay is a four-day celebration to honor the last day of the year. Festivities kick off with a torchlight procession, followed by a huge street festival with music and dancing, and wrap up with fireworks over Edinburgh Castle and Calton Hill. In the past, Viking longboats have been part of the torchlight procession — in a nod to Hogmanay's pagan roots — and then burned.

Sydney

Sydney

Sydney, west of the  international date line, welcomed 2010 while New Yorkers were still enjoying their morning coffee at 8 a.m. EST. The big bang begins at midnight local time, with an estimated 1.5 million revelers watching fireworks exploding from barges on the harbor, the rooftops of city skyscrapers and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The fireworks display has been known to last for up to 25 minutes.

New York's Times Square

New York's Times Square

Times Square has been the focal point of New Year’s celebrations since 1907, when the first ball dropped on One Times Square. This year will be no different, and people will begin squeezing into the area from 42nd to 47th streets between Broadway and Seventh Avenue early in the afternoon. At 11:59 p.m., the New Year’s Eve ball will begin its descent as a million voices start counting down. The geodesic sphere, designed by Waterford Crystal and featuring 960 crystal triangles lit from within, will drop 70 feet in 60 seconds.

Ecuador

Ecuador

To celebrate the new year, Ecuadoreans create effigies called años viejos (“old years”), which represent people and events from the past year. Stuffed dummies — made of straw, newspaper and old clothes, with papier-mâché masks — are often used to portray unpopular political characters or leaders. At midnight, the effigies are set on fire to symbolize burning away of the past year and welcoming of the New Year. Since the dummies are often stuffed with firecrackers, the purging ceremony comes with plenty of racket.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas

On New Year’s Eve, the usually clogged Strip will be closed to vehicular traffic for a giant street party. Walk among thousands of other revelers spilling out of hotels from Mandalay Bay to the Stratosphere, all awaiting the huge fireworks show at midnight that adds even more sparkle to the city of neon. Nearby on Fremont Street, the fireworks are shown on the massive LED canopy while tribute bands provide live entertainment.

Seattle

Seattle

More than 20,000 people gather at the base of the Space Needle to watch the elevators rise from the base as the countdown to New Year’s begins. When the elevators reach the top, pyrotechnics explode from all sides of the 605-foot tower — including more than 200 feet above the roof — turning it into a giant and colorful sparkler.

Disneyland

Disneyland

Fireworks light up the sky almost every night at Disneyland, so you know that for New Year's Eve, the California theme park goes all out to make the performance memorable. Get there early, as the best viewing spots, right in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, are also the most crowded. It's a Small World gives you a great view, as well, and also try near the Rivers of America in Frontierland.

New Orleans

New Orleans

In a twist on New York’s ball drop, New Orleans revelers will count down to 2011 as a giant, black and gold fleur-de-lis is lowered above the Jax Brewery Condominiums. The event starts at 9 p.m. with live music in Jackson Square, with the Queen of Soul Irma Thomas and others. At midnight, spectacular fireworks light up the sky over the Mississippi River.

World's Most 11 Burial Haunting Cemeteries

 

World's Most 11 Burial Haunting Cemeteries

New Orleans

Just in time for Halloween, we found 11 burial grounds that are destinations in their own right. From a mausoleum that was closed down after too many ghost sightings to a graveyard that doubles as a small town, these places are perfect for a fall tour — if you dare.
Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans, with its chilling collection of aboveground tombs, was the setting for Interview with the Vampire.
In a city set below sea level, there is no hiding the dead underground, so in New Orleans, cemeteries are collections of aboveground tombs, a creepy novelty that attracts many visitors to these Gothic graveyards. Concerned about disrepair, local licensed guides volunteer their time to give tours of two of New Orleans's oldest graveyards, Lafayette Cemetery—setting for Interview with the Vampire — and St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — where you'll see "voodoo queen" Marie Laveau's Greek Revival tomb. All proceeds are donated to Save Our Cemeteries, a group that works to preserve and restore the city's graveyards.

London

London's Highgate Cemetery has been the backdrop for numerous horror films.
 
Dug into a hillside overlooking London, an imposing Victorian-era archway overgrown with shrubbery leads into a stone tunnel lined with catacombs, the darkness eventually giving way to a circle of sunlit vaults staged around a 300-year-old cedar.
It's easy to see why this oldest segment of Highgate Cemetery has been used in many horror films, including Taste the Blood of Dracula and From Beyond the Grave, and it's accessible only by tours, which also visit the graveyard's newer reaches, a maze of decaying tombstones covered in dense greenery and topped by oversize statues ranging from the carved-stone grand piano above one musician's grave to the gigantic bust of Karl Marx adorning his own resting place.

Arlington, Va.

One of the most overlooked sections of the Arlington National Cemetery in D.C. is also the most haunting.

While thousands of D.C.'s daily tourists zip across the Potomac River for quick photo ops at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns and the Kennedy family plot, a few venture farther from the tour bus to explore the graves of the 300,000 other people buried here. Grab your walking shoes (but not your wallet) and join DC By Foot's free, 1.5-mile walking tour, which takes visitors through lesser-seen stops inside the vast burial ground, such as the segment of the cemetery that once housed a village of freed slaves and the memorial to Confederate soldiers.

Rome

This cemetery in Rome seems to cast a spell over visitors — Percy Bysshe Shelley was so taken by its eerie beauty that he extolled its merits in a poem and was later laid to rest here.

Wedged between a towering, 2,000-year-old pyramid entombing a Roman dignitary and a surviving section of the 12-mile-long brick wall built to protect ancient Rome, the Non-Catholic Cemetery is a serene oasis in the middle of this modern metropolis.
One of Italy's most enchanting urban settings, the graveyard's stately cypress trees, poetic statues, and oasis-like ambiance, inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write, "It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." Shelley got his wish, and his grave is something of a pilgrimage for writers, many of whom, similarly enchanted, have opted to rest here themselves. The cemetery's English-language tours ensure you won't miss any of the boldface names and — in case you fall for the spell yourself — yes, it is still possible to be buried here.

Edinburgh, Scotland

Two buildings in this Edinburgh graveyard were shut down because of an uncanny abundance of ghostly apparitions.

Thousands of 17th-century graves lined with creepy carvings of skeletons and ghouls make Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirkyard one of the world's most haunting cemeteries. While a stroll through these eerie environs is shivering enough for some, Greyfriars's real draw lies in two on-site structures: the prison where more than 1,000 members of the Covenanters religious movement were imprisoned in 1679, and the adjacent mausoleum where "Bloody" George Mackenzie, who oversaw their persecution, is buried. Local authorities locked both buildings in the 1990s after a wave of paranormal sightings spooked one too many people, but local writer Jan-Andrew Henderson has been permitted to lead tours of both sites, where hundreds of visitors swear they have encountered the "Mackenzie Poltergeist."

Cairo

Newcomers to Cairo are often surprised to find the living existing among the dead in this town set within a cemetery.

Egyptians know the four-square-mile stretch of land running through densely populated Cairo as simply al-Qarafa (the cemetery), but to hundreds of thousands of locals, it is much more than that. Many of the city's poorest residents actually live inside this 1,300-year-old cemetery, creating homes, shops, and even schools next to and inside mausoleums, with faded gravestones serving as lawn ornaments.
Local authorities have recently discouraged promoting the site as a tourist attraction and are blocking access to large groups and buses, but it's still possible to visit with Casual Cairo detours, an outfitter that takes no more than three people at once. But time to see this one-of-a-kind neighborhood may be running out — the Egyptian government is studying plans to relocate residents, raze the cemetery, and turn it into a public park.

Los Angeles

L.A.'s Hollywood Forever Cemetery seems like something you'd see in a film noir.

Clad in a vintage black evening gown, dark sunglasses, and carrying a black lace parasol, Hollywood historian/tour guide Karie Bible appears to have stepped right out of a film noir movie as she leads guests through L.A.'s Hollywood Forever Cemetery. With the Paramount Studios Water Tower and Hollywood sign peaking out above the grounds, Bible tells tales of famous residents like director Cecil B. DeMille, '50s horror hostess Vampira, and rocker Johnny Ramone.

Paris

Graveyard guards have their work cut out for them at Paris's Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, where fans of the many celebrities buried here go to great lengths to pay their respects.

Irish aesthete Oscar Wilde would undoubtedly be pleased to find his sphinxlike tomb at Paris's Cimetière du Père-Lachaise covered in hundreds of red-lipstick marks from admiring fans. (Graveyard guards are less amused — fats in the lipstick are causing the structure to deteriorate.) Many outfitters include a brief stop at this 109-acre walled compound in Paris's northeast corner on longer city itineraries, but it's worth grabbing a self-guided tour map from the conservation office and spending a day finding the many famous graves — from Jim Morrison to Chopin — hidden among the cobblestoned paths and grassy expanses. Don't forget to pack a lunch — macabre as it may sound, Parisians love to picnic inside the cemetery, one of the city's largest green spaces.

Savannah, Ga.

The Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah is best known as the site for the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

If graveyards were created by set designers, they would all look like Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery, where elaborate, ivy-covered crypts are guarded by disturbingly lifelike statues, and mausoleums are laced with stained glass, all set among the mossy oak trees and blooming gardens of an 18th-century plantation on a bluff overlooking the Wilmington River.
The scenic graveyard's popularity boomed after it appeared in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and many guides now offer driving tours of the 100-acre cemetery, although you'll miss the charm of wandering through its many hidden corners. Instead, follow the Bonaventure Historical Society's self-guided tour, available at the weekend-only visitors center.

Baltimore

In Baltimore, Edgar Allan Poe's final resting place looks as if it's straight out of one of his tales.

The raven-topped monument to macabre author Edgar Allan Poe is what brings most visitors to downtown Baltimore's 18th-century graveyard , but look a little closer at Westminster Burying Ground and you'll find a scene that could be pulled right from one of his eerie tales. Three years after Poe's death, much of the graveyard was paved over to make way for a Gothic church, which was built on elevated brick legs that arch over the graves. Today, tours of the property include a visit into the creepy catacombs that now hide below the church's lower level.

Buenos Aires

In Buenos Aires, the resting place of Eva Perón is at once opulent and melancholy.

An ominous black door, guarded by a melancholy young woman carved from marble, leads into a spacious room where a single grave is topped with an ornate sculpted rose. It's just one of the many opulent mausoleums at Recoleta Cemetery; burying the dead here is a posh afterlife status symbol practiced by Buenos Aires's wealthiest families for 200 years.
A trip inside is topped only by hearing the myriad stories among Recoleta's 6,000-plus temples, pyramids, and castles — in this case, the rose-topped tomb was erected to assuage a family's guilt after a young woman slipped into a coma and was buried alive. Nearby you'll find the flower-strewn grave of Eva Perón; she was buried below 27 feet of steel and cement as a precaution since political rivals had previously stolen her corpse.