Where will you be ringing in the New Year?

ST IVES, CORNWALL

After four days of feeding the 5,000 (well, that's what it felt like), and seven hours of driving almost to the tip of Cornwall, we found the funkiest town in the south-west – and a great place to feel reborn each New Year's Day. Indeed, the more we got to know the place, the more I felt convinced I had spent a former life in St Ives, maybe as a 17th-century serving wench in the infamous Sloop Inn, which still graces the seafront.

Simon and I had checked into the Garrack Hotel, expecting\ to stay in to watch the Hogmanay festivities on television. But then we chanced on a tall wizard with a pointy hat strolling by the window, quickly followed by two large bumble bees.

It turns out that the seafront at St Ives is the venue for one massive street party. The narrow, cobbled streets around the Sloop are packed full of people dressed in weird and wonderful costumes. We found the bumble bees again, plus Napoleon Bonaparte, Bart Simpson and the Radioactive Isotope Twins all queuing at the bar. There were fairies, knights in shining armour, ghosts, skeletons, John Major and an angel (perhaps fallen) with a three-foot wingspan.

So what actually happens in this fantasy world? There are no official events, just a genial atmosphere as 20,000 people wait to ring out the old and ring in the new. There's a cacophony of noise, with a DJ at one end of the bay and a steel band at the other. When the massive town clock chimes in the New Year, seas of people join hands, sing Auld Lang Syne and kiss and dance wildly, all to a backdrop of fireworks over the sea. Everyone parties into the night. Pubs seem to remain open till about 4am. The police presence is both good-natured and superfluous.

And on New Year's Day – apart from the odd stiletto tangled up in a fishnet stocking and some bauble earrings still flashing forlornly by the beach wall – you'd never know there'd been a cast of thousands there the night before.

JANEY LEE GRACE

Garrack Hotel, 01736 796 199;, St Ives tourist office, 01736 796 297

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Whenever it stages a major event, Sydney is left with a problem: how do you follow that? The triple spectacular with which the city celebrated the arrival of the new millennium, followed nine months later by the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, is hard to beat.

Sydney's millennium spectacular, 11 hours before the first damp squibs popped off in Greenwich, was a glorious marriage between the elemental beauties of light and water and two of the old century's civil engineering triumphs – the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The Australian climate and the unquenchable energy of its people did the rest. The Olympic ceremonies may have had the occasional squirm-inducing moment, but they, too, were masterpieces of hi-tech presentation.

Everything hereafter is destined to feel a bit "after the Lord Mayor's Show", and this New Year is bound to pale in comparison. Or is it?

As the sun sets over the distant Blue Mountains, the first firework show will be laid on for the children, who are then supposed to go to bed. Some hope. Fire is eternally fascinating, even in a city that has recently been choked and threatened by it.

Then the restaurants fill and the roistering begins, and as midnight approaches, the crowds gather on the beaches and harbour foreshores. The old bridge shudders under waves of incendiaries, culminating in a split-second crescendo as the midnight bells ring out. No matter how well it's done, spectators will drift back to the bars, muttering that it was much better in the old days.

Eleven hours later, Sydney Cricket Ground hosts the traditional New Year cricket Test, the last in the current Ashes series. But don't expect too many fireworks there. Not from the Poms, at least.

FRANK PARTRIDGE

ZENDEREN, EAST HOLLAND

The trouble with weddings is that it is (too) easy to make new friends and, in all the excitement and alcohol, even make absurd travel plans. That is how we came to be sharing a small farmhouse with five other couples, some of whom we'd not met before, for a week in the pleasant but scenically unambitious region of Zenderen.

East Holland. Two hours by train from Schiphol. The middle of nowhere. And could it really sleep 12, as the internet site had promised us?

The house, thankfully, was Tardis-like. Each couple got their own bedroom – ours featured a stunning photo-print picture wall of Middle-Earth proportions. The lack of a dishwasher was compensated for by the efficiency of our hosts: a PlayStation, stereo system and many videos with Dutch subtitles were provided to while away the long hours of darkness. A toastie maker and a deep fryer were brought to add fat to the thighs. And because it was near freezing outside, the Grolsch was always at perfect drinking temperature.

Almost as soon as we got there, a blanket of snow smothered the farmland. Walks in the winter wonderland were interspersed with the pyrotechnic fixations of the locals nearby, who enjoyed lighting their fireworks as soon as the mood took them, which was usually between lunch and bedtime.

The pond froze over on day two and the almost full moon that rose over it bathed the landscape in a surreal blue light, adding a feeling of magic to the proceedings. We lit a bonfire near the pond and built a snowman.

Each night a different couple was on cooking duty, and the need to produce a more dynamic gourmet feast than the previous candidates became pressing. Exotic tastes from Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico and Italy put paid to my expectation of bland Dutch fare.

The build-up to Nieuwjaar included a bingo night with our Dutch friends dressed like extras from an Essex gangster film. New Year's Eve itself was spent in cocktail attire as we played roulette for prizes on a cheap toy-store roulette wheel, with bets placed on a baize cloth that someone appeared to have lifted from a casino. Somehow the evening seemed much more civilised than the standard British New Year, even though prodigious quantities of lager were consumed.

KAY McMAHON

The website of the house the writer stayed in is www.alassy.nl/nederland/vakantiehuizen/overijssel/vak_ov_11.htm. Flights to Amsterdam are widely available from UK airports, with fares starting at about £60 return