To meet 2022 with dignity, urgently buy tickets and book hotels. And we have selected five options for you, including as many as three directions where a visa is completely unnecessary. Five best places to celebrate the New Year
Georgia
Five best places to celebrate the New Year
Georgia is practically synonymous with the New Year: tables are full of delicious food, alcohol is like a river, loud people, songs, and dances. Explore the charming courtyards in the old city of Tbilisi, stroll through Rustaveli, find a place with your favorite khinkali, and if you want some real extreme – just rent a car and go to the mountains – enjoy the views and maneuver between herds of cows and sheep.
On December 31, it is best to go to the Peace Bridge – all the locals gather there. Everyone has a bag of firecrackers, smoke boxes, and fireworks with them – it feels like they have fallen into the clutches of some very active football fans. You can drink with taxi drivers and hug passers-by. Do not even try to preserve your hearing (it will not work) and at some point sharply feel – here it is real life. By the way, we have already painted the finished route for you.
How to get there? If you want to get there as quickly as possible, use Belavia services – € 278 round trip, 2 hours – and you are there. Departure from Ukraine will significantly help to save money. For example, a ticket for a flight from Kyiv – Kutaisi from UIA can be purchased for only € 110 in two directions.
Armenia
Five best places to celebrate the New Year
On New Year’s Eve, first, go to Yerevan. There are plenty of options for entertainment: you can merge with the cheerful festive crowd on Republic Square, made of pink marble, cheerfully dance to folk songs, treat and treat yourself to cognac from a plastic bottle and feel incredible unity with the locals. Ten minutes before midnight, climb the unfinished Cascade, turning to the city at every step (each time the view is new), and wait for the fireworks – New Year’s are always the coolest.
Admire Ararat (but only in the morning in good weather), make friends with someone from the locals to be taken along the Martian landscape of the Armenian mountains and mountain monasteries, take you to the Ararat factory to taste 15-year-old cognacs – and all this for very funny money and with a twinkle.
How to get there? You can fly by Aeroflot (from € 195 in two directions) or UIA (from € 220) with a transfer in Moscow and Kyiv, respectively. From Moscow, the cheapest tickets for the New Year are offered by the mysterious airline Ural Airlines – € 217 round trip. Alternatively, you can combine Georgia and Armenia in one trip – there is an excellent railway and minibus communication between the countries.
Serbia
Five best places to celebrate the New Year
We never tire of confessing our love for Serbia and will not rest until each of our readers at least once visits this hospitable Balkan country. “Hospitable” in the fullest sense of the word – do not be surprised if complete strangers want to treat you with brandy, give you their phone numbers “just in case” or persistently advise where to go and what to see.
Serbs love the New Year and celebrate it with pleasure. The main festivities in Belgrade take place on the square near the assembly – the building of the local parliament. Usually, up to 100 thousand people gather here, the feeling is all equal as if everyone knows each other.
We have already told you what to do in Belgrade and how to navigate the local cuisine. After exploring Belgrade, feel free to go to Novi Sad or to the Kopaonik ski resort.
How to get there? There are direct Belavia flights to Belgrade (it flies, however, twice a week) – from € 300. You can get there with a transfer to Austrian Airlines – it will be € 50-60 cheaper.
Romania
Five best places to celebrate the New Year
You should start your New Year’s acquaintance with Romania from Bucharest, but you shouldn’t stay there for a long time. The best option is to rent a car (in Romania, car rental is one of the cheapest in Europe) and go on a real Carpathian trip – through medieval Brasov and Sighisoara to elegant Sibiu, and if you have enough time and energy, then to student Cluj-Napoca. Moderately exotic, quite inexpensive, and most importantly – very beautiful. Bonus – the amazing pretentious architecture of the gypsy villages, which you will surely pass along the way.
Sighisoara is worthy of special mention – it is an ideally preserved medieval town and, moreover, the birthplace of Vlad “Dracula” Tepes. There is a restaurant in the house where Dracula was born: dine there by candlelight to get lost in time and forget that, in fact, the 21st century is in the yard. Important: a narrow mountain road leads from Bucharest to Brasov; on the post-New Year’s days there is a high probability of many hours of traffic jams!
How to get there? You can fly to Bucharest with a short stopover in Vienna for € 251.
Portugal
Five best places to celebrate the New Year
Celebrating the New Year by the ocean is a noble and soul-saving deed. Another question is that relatively inexpensive tickets to Portugal should be taken care of in advance, now even the most tricky connections on low-cost airlines will still result in a decent amount. This, of course, is a minus. But otherwise – solid pluses. Relatively warm, inexpensive, simple, and tasty food, port and wine, and with a little luck you can even start – or continue – surfing.
How to get there? There are no direct flights and convenient connections, it is better to fly with TAP Portugal or LOT airlines. Alternatively, take Ryanair from Vilnius to Madrid (€ 109 on December 30), and from there take a convenient flight to Lisbon or Porto.
