Where to Celebrate New Year’s Twice (or Thrice!)
By Dean Clark. Published 19-Dec-2023
There are places on Earth where simply taking a short trip can give you the chance to ring in the New Year more than once.
Three different time zones meet at a single spot in Australia, creating a unique chance to triple your year-end celebration.
©iStockphoto.com/JohnCarnemolla
Three Steps for Three Midnights in Australia
Thanks to the quirks of borders, time zones, and the International Date Line, New Year’s Eve doesn’t have to be a once-a-year event.
Where can you go to celebrate the most in a single day? A good strategy is to make your way Down Under, to the border of three Australian states, where three different time zones come together at a tiny dot on the map called Cameron Corner.
This dusty, 2-person outback settlement straddles New South Wales (UTC+11), South Australia (UTC +10.30), and Queensland (UTC +10). So a three-pronged New Year’s celebration can be as simple as taking up a position on the Corner Post, a survey marker in the desert, and stepping from state to state as midnight rolls through the three time zones—half an hour apart.
An Icy Stroll Back in Time in Scandinavia
If Australia is a bit out of reach, another option is to base yourself on the Finnish/Swedish border in the arctic Finnish town of Kaaresuvanto, which becomes the Swedish village of Karesuando once you take the short walk over the bridge spanning the Muonio River.
Crossing the Muonio river from Finland to Sweden means changing nations and time zones.
©iStockphoto.com/Francesca Maria Costantino
The waterway dividing the two communities also represents a border of time zones. So New Year’s Day happens first on the Finnish side, in the UTC +2 time zone. You could pop the champagne at midnight there, bundle up, make the frozen trek across the bridge to the Swedish side of the town in the UTC +1 zone, and witness the New Year born again an hour later.
South Pacific Celebration
To give yourself even more time to party, recover, and celebrate once more, try enjoying New Year’s Eve on the green Isle of Majuro in Micronesia. Then, on the morning of January 1, board a flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. This five-hour journey crosses the International Date Line and arrives some 17 hours before you took off, local time. So you would have plenty of time to charge up for a second chance to revel at the stroke of midnight in the Hawaiian capital.
Flights That Land Before You Leave
As Easy as 1-2-3
Wherever you choose to usher in the New Year, it’s interesting to stop and take a look at the calendar this January 31 because—depending on how you write out dates—you can be looking at the repeating sequential date of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, or 12-31-23.
Check out our Date Pattern Calculator and discover more unique and interesting date patterns.