Travel Tidbits - Celebrating New Year's Eve...Twice!

Two parties are better than one! Looking to go on a New Year's Eve adventure? Double the fun by throwing out these ideas! VALENCA, PORTUGAL + TUI, SPAIN: One of my personal favorites. Valença and Tui are essentially one continuous medieval town split by a river and connected by a beautiful iron bridge. On New Year's Eve you celebrate at midnight in Valença, then walk across the bridge into Tui and do the whole thing again an hour later, complete with a second countdown, second fireworks, and second glass of something sparkling. The setting is extraordinary: both towns are fortified, medieval, and photogenic in a way that makes the experience feel cinematic. LLOYDMINSTER, ALBERTA + SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA: This is perhaps the world's most legit double New Year's town. Lloydminster literally sits on the provincial border, and Saskatchewan doesn't observe daylight saving time, meaning the two sides of the same city ring in the new year at different times. Main Street is the time zone line. You can stand in one year and look across the street into another. BAARLE-HERTOG / BAARLE-NASSAU- BELGIUM + NETHERLANDS: This might be the most delightfully quirky border town on earth, border runs through houses, restaurants, and shops, with brass lines embedded in the floors and pavements marking where one country ends and another begins. Both are in the same time zone, it's more about the novelty of celebrating in two countries simultaneously rather than twice but restaurants literally straddle the border and it's extraordinary. CORDOBA, ARGENTINA + SANTANA DO LIVRAMENTO, BRAZIL: The Argentina-Brazil border runs through several small towns where you can cross and gain or lose an hour depending on the season, since Brazil observes daylight saving and Argentina doesn't consistently. This Brazilian border town is a particularly good one a single continuous city split by a line, 2 countries, 2 celebrations, 1 party street. GREENWICH, UK: A little less dramatic but historically irresistible, standing on the Prime Meridian line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich with one foot in the Eastern and one in the Western Hemisphere on New Year's Eve is one of those things that's completely meaningless and yet completely wonderful. It's a bucket list moment. KIRIBATI + SAMOA + AMERICAN SAMOA: For the most dramatic date line experience anywhere: Samoa and American Samoa are about 120 kilometers apart but on opposite sides of the International Date Line so when it's New Year's Eve in American Samoa, Samoa has already been in the New Year for 24 hours. Kiribati's Caroline Island is the first inhabited place on earth to greet each new year, and it does so while places to its west are still in yesterday.