Where Will You Be...December 31, 1999?

By Emily Mitchell and Megan Rutherford With bureau reports

PRIME TIME

Jan. 1, 2000, doesn't officially begin at Greenwich, but don't tell that to anyone in Britain. The London borough, home to the Royal Observatory and located right smack on the 0[degree] meridian, will mark the stroke of midnight, Greenwich mean time, by shooting a green laser beam into the sky and bouncing a satellite signal around the world that will set off international celebrations.

After that, it's time to get down and party! Along the riverbanks upstream from Greenwich to central London about six miles to the west, festivals and street parties will run well past dawn, with cruisers and river buses shuttling revelers between events. At the newly completed Millennium Dome, claimed to be the world's largest domed building (though it resembles a flying saucer with spikes), the evening extravaganza promises to surpass even the elaborate opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Tickets will be hard to come by, but 10,000 have been set aside for VIPs and distribution to the public.

In Scotland, the Hogmanay Party--named for the Scottish New Year's Eve--will be launched with a torchlight procession through Edinburgh, culminating atop Carlton Hill with a huge bonfire. The city center will then be transformed into one blazing outdoor party for some 200,000 hardy celebrators. Nightly festivities will continue throughout the week. While much of the entertainment is free, tickets are required for such events as the rock concert in Princes Street Gardens, which will have a floodlighted Edinburgh Castle as its backdrop. Though the Scottish city can be cold in late December, wool sweaters, drams of single-malt whisky and drafts of Guinness will no doubt ward off the chill.

WHITE-HOT NIGHTS

On New Year's Eve, Brazilians pay homage to Iemanja, the African queen of the sea. Millions of revelers clad entirely in white, a symbol of purity in Afro-Brazilian culture, throng the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to placate Iemanja and court good luck by lighting candles and tossing flowers, cosmetics and other gifts into the ocean for the vain goddess.

For December 1999, many Rio hotels are offering relatively affordable rates, but prices at some are steep. A five-night stay for two ranges anywhere from $2,750 to $11,000. While the pricey oceanfront hotels on Copacabana Beach offer the best views of the festivities and dazzling fireworks, any place in the city provides respite from the wintry blasts of North America.

To the north of Rio, the city of Salvador da Bahia, which will be celebrating its 450th birthday, promises to have the country's most sizzling street party. For the Bom Jesus dos Navegantes celebration, which honors sailors, thousands of boats with banners aflutter will fill the harbor. Along the ancient cobblestone avenues and more modern thoroughfares, trios eletricos, samba-reggae bands on trucks with eardrum-shattering loudspeakers, will play. Barefoot, bare-chested youths in white cotton trousers will perform the traditional capoeira, a carefully choreographed martial art dating back to slavery that combines somersaults and kickboxing and prohibits contact with one's opponent. To showcase this feast of the senses, several major luxury chains--including the Meridien, Othon and Tropical groups--are offering packages for their hotels in Salvador, with costs starting at $300 a couple.

THE BIG APPLE DROP

Watching the ball descend on New York City's Times Square has been a New Year's ritual for nearly a century. Next year the Big Apple plans to complement its annual rite with live images on giant video screens around the square of other celebrations beamed from each of the world's 24 time zones. The day-long show begins in the Fiji Islands at 7 a.m. E.T. and comes all the way back home by midnight to Times Square and the plummeting 6-ft., 500-lb. rhinestone-studded aluminum ball. Dick Clark, 68, will be one of the hosts of the fete; a half-million souls are expected to jam Times Square, with an additional 300 million tuning in via television.

Farther uptown, fireworks will burst over the Hudson River, with some of the best seats in the city reserved for the thousands of guests attending a dinner at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, one of the world's largest indoor gathering places. For those in a nostalgic mood, the center will have on display an exhibit of sports memorabilia, with legendary sports figures in attendance.

Interested? Start planning now. The Marriott Marquis, which is giving a black-tie dinner dance that will feature a laser light show, took its first reservation for New Year's Eve 1999 in 1983--two years before the hotel opened. Now it's fully booked, with a waiting list of thousands.

If the best-laid plans of others don't appeal, you can custom design your own party at the Millennium Broadway. This aptly named hotel is offering the use of 538 guest rooms for four days, meals and beverages included, for 1,200 of your closest friends--plus the opportunity to project your own personal millennium message onto the hotel's facade. The cost? A mere $3 million. And, yes, it's still available.

A CITY THAT ROCKS

For decades, Bill Graham Presents has staged New Year's Eve bashes at up to 18 separate locations in and around San Francisco on a night when most promoters take a holiday. The Graham-fest will be there for Dec. 31, 1999, as well, but it will be joined on the Big One by some upstart competitors.

At least half a dozen of the Bay Area's largest concert arenas, including the 60,000-seat Oakland Coliseum, have been reserved by Graham Presents. Though president Gregg Perloff has been tight-lipped about who will be headlining the shows, rumors are solidifying that the Other Ones, recently formed by surviving members of the Grateful Dead, will take the stage. Meanwhile, Cool World Productions is planning "a mini-Woodstock for the millennium" a rave-style, all-night shindig with computer-generated music, animated graphics and laser displays at a venue to be announced. The gay community is also mobilizing for a blowout bash or two.

Even happy revelers have to sleep sometime. Try the Ritz-Carlton, which is offering the "Ultimate Experience": a three-day package that includes 18-karat-gold his-and-hers Bulgari watches, a chauffeur-driven Jaguar, daily massages, butler service, a five-course dinner and a tour of Napa Valley, plus a tasting of the "10 finest vintages from the past century." The ultimate price: $100,000. If that's more than you were planning to spend, the hotel offers lesser, lower-cost packages. Most of the Bay City's other great hotels still have vacancies as well.

A HUMBLE SALUTE

Many cities are vying for recognition as the first to greet the millennium, but Vancouver humbly bills itself as one of the last major centers to salute the new era. Being last has its advantages. "That makes Vancouver a great place to have the longest celebration possible," boasts Tom Esakin, president of Millennium Vancouver 2000. To keep the party going for everyone, MV2000 is focusing on community building with the motto A BETTER CITY, FOR A BETTER WORLD, IN A BETTER FUTURE.

The search is on for ideas to create a lasting legacy, says Esakin, "so that when we're all long gone, people will look back and say, 'These people left us gifts that keep on giving.'" Ideas on the drawing board: a park project, a work of art, a time capsule.

In celebration of the city's multicultural heritage, Vancouver is linking up by satellite with London, Tokyo, Beijing, Berlin, Sydney, New York City and Rio for a 24-hour global toast. The locally renowned "low-tech magic" performers, Public Dreams Society, are coordinating with other community groups to design an interactive spectacle featuring live music and stilt dancers, whose costumes will literally burst into flames. There will be a black-tie gala, at least two fireworks displays and a laser light show. And to ensure that no one goes hungry, food will be served to the needy on the downtown east side. Throughout the day, all 23 of the city's community centers will offer free family events.

When it's all over, MV2000 has designated Jan. 3 for a Multifaith Service of Celebration to revive the spirits of spent revelers. Organizers envision an event at which everyone from any faith will dance, sing, drum and break bread--or pita, bagels and wafers, for that matter.

ME-FIRST FEVER

A century ago, the International Meridian Conference did Fiji a favor. The conferees laid out the international date line along the 180th meridian but put an eastward kink in it to keep the people of the far-flung islands of the Fijian archipelago on the same page of their day planners. Now Fijians are calling that good turn a bad one. Repudiating the date line as an artificial construct, they claim their country, which straddles the 180th line of longitude, will be the first to greet the year 2000.

Right or wrong, Fijians are positively infected with me-first fever. The centerpiece of their New Year's Eve preparations is the installation of a Meridian Wall and monument along the 180th longitude, where it crosses Udu Point on the island of Vanua Levu. Sealed within the estimated 100,000 bricks of the wall will be vials containing messages from around the world. The wall will be one of the starting points of a Unity Torch Relay, beginning Dec. 25 and finishing at the capital, Suva, on New Year's Eve.

In the week surrounding the New Year (from Dec. 26 to Jan. 3), a World Festival of Praise will be held in Suva. Millennium Hibiscus Celebrations, beginning Dec. 21, will honor Fiji's ethnic diversity, culminating in the coronation of the Hibiscus Millennium Queen in the capital at the moment when 1999 becomes 2000.

If this appeals to you, don't delay making plans. About 70% of Fiji's hotels and resorts are already booked. One idyllic spot with vacancies: Turtle Island, where Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins frolicked in The Blue Lagoon. For a couple's rate of $28,000 a week, guests can scuba dive, explore the island's hills by horseback or mountain bike and dine on the produce of the resort's organic garden. True romantics may want to take advantage of the island owner's offer to throw a lavish Jan. 1, 2000, wedding for a blushing $200,000 (airfare and 10 nights' accommodation included).

DAWN UNDER

Despite Canberra's insistence that the third millennium won't begin until 2001, the rest of Australia plans to celebrate in lockstep with the rest of us. In fact, Sydney is billing itself as the first major city to see the sun rise on the new age.

Famous for throwing great parties, Sydney aims to make the occasion memorable. The streets will teem with jugglers, magicians, clowns, singers, acrobats and stilt walkers. There will be a free outdoor music concert in a central city park, a Brazilian dance festival in Hyde Park, a performance for kids featuring such popular local talent as the Wiggles and Bananas in Pajamas. And for the evening's climax, more than a million people are expected to crowd the city's shoreline to watch fireworks detonate from three major locations around the Opera House and on the Harbour Bridge.

Unlike New York or London, Sydney will probably be balmy on Dec. 31. Furthermore, brags local taxi driver Joe Zaouk, "we have the best harbor in the world. People are friendly. It's clean, fresh and well organized. It's just a fantastic place!" So fantastic, in fact, that all the major hotels are already booked. The only available accommodations are those still under construction. Best bets: the Mercure Hotel Sydney, opening in October, and the Avillion, scheduled to open next April.

BACK TO BASICS

For one little West Bank town, welcoming the millennium will take 16 months and $130 million. From Christmas 1999 through Easter 2001, Bethlehem expects to play host to an estimated 3 million pilgrims. "This is where it all started," says Nabeel Kassis, the Palestinian official in charge of the Bethlehem 2000 Project. "People who believe in the Nativity will want to see where it happened."

To prepare for the influx, Bethlehem is undergoing a major face-lift. The rutted turnoff from the Jerusalem highway is being widened and resurfaced, and Manger Square, until recently an unsightly parking lot in front of the 6th century Church of the Nativity, is being transformed into an attractive, shaded piazza. A pristine four-story peace center will replace the clunky concrete and stone police station, built by the British in 1938.

One of two new hotels under construction, the five-star, 240-room InterContinental, is in the splendid palace of a pasha. When completed, it will bring the number of hotel rooms in Bethlehem to, appropriately enough, 2,000. Despite 200 additional bed-and-breakfast rooms elsewhere in the town, accommodations will be hard to come by; most visitors should plan on staying five miles away in Jerusalem.

Since Jan. 1, 2000, falls on the Jewish Sabbath, New Year's Eve will be quiet in the western part of Jerusalem. But Bethlehem is planning a two-week ecumenical Holy Nights festival that starts Dec. 24 and ends Jan. 7, Orthodox Christmas on the Julian calendar.

Choral concerts are planned for every evening, with organizers hoping to sign up the incomparable Three Tenors--Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti--for a New Year's Eve Concert of Hope in Manger Square.

BOOGIE WITH THE GODS

A thousand years ago in the central Indian town of Khajuraho, the monarchs of the Chandella dynasty commissioned a vast temple complex, consecrated to the great triumvirate of Hinduism: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. What makes the complex unique is that among the thousands of exquisitely carved images are scores of sculptures portraying gods, humans and animals in uninhibited sexual embrace. Once lost beneath dense jungle, the site has emerged in recent years as a popular attraction. "What better way to end the millennium," suggests Betty Bohnenblust, a local hotelier, "than to relive its beginning?"

Until now, March--when India's leading classical dancers perform for the annual Khajuraho Festival--has been the site's busiest time. But in 1999, the government is collaborating with promoters to create a year-long Khajuraho Millennium Festival; major events are tentatively planned for December. "There is no more magnificent sight than when the temples are lighted up at night and the dancers perform," says Bohnenblust invitingly. "It is as if you are transported back 1,000 years to the splendor and beauty of the Chandella kingdom."

Now visitors can live like kings, thanks to the town's two five-star hotels, the Jass Oberoi and Taj Chandella, where prices start at $40, and four other high-caliber establishments. More adventurous souls may want to climb closer to the gods and stay in one of the two tree-house hotels on a riverbank nearby; rooms there start at $10.

FLAME OF HOPE

For South Africans, picnicking on Table Mountain, the flat-topped granite promontory that dominates the dramatic skyline of Cape Town, is a time-honored way of ushering in the New Year. As 2000 approaches, the 3,500-ft. mountain will sport a new look: the giant image of a clock face will be projected onto the front of the cliff, with the city's inhabitants and summertime visitors able to count down the minutes to the millennium.

Cape Town, the capital city where Nelson Mandela made his first public speech after his release from 27 years of imprisonment, is the focal point of South Africa's celebration. In the harbor on Robben Island, where Mandela spent most of his internment, an eternal flame of freedom will be lighted during a ceremony that will be televised around the world. "We are planning a message of light and of hope," says David Jack, who heads the Waterfront Project, one of the world's most ambitious dockland developments. The 15-year, $500 million undertaking, which includes five-star hotels, restaurants, theaters and craft markets, will eventually extend into the city's foreshore via a negotiable canal access system.

Plans for the millennium festivities include a nostalgic coastal voyage aboard a precise reproduction of a turn-of-the-century steamship. Says Sheryl Ozinksy, spokeswoman for Captour, Cape Town's tourist organization: "We want people to be telling their grandchildren they were in Cape Town for New Year 2000." By then, the city's hotel capacity will have nearly doubled, to around 15,000 beds, and prices will be in the $40-to-$150-a night range.

A CAPITAL FESTIVAL

On the last day of 1999, virtually everyone in Berlin is likely to head for the same place: the Brandenburg Gate. Once a symbol of the city's loathed division, it was triumphantly reopened in December 1989. A decade later, it is certain to be a particularly joyous gathering place to usher in 2000--with splendid music, wondrous fireworks and considerable jubilation.

For the entire month of December, the historic heart of the city, with its landmark Reichstag and Checkpoint Charlie, will be transformed into a gigantic open-air festival. Multimedia installations, laser animation, sound-and-light shows and an arts festival will honor the once and future German capital.

During the last week of 1999, much of the rejoicing in this vibrant metropolis will be expressed musically. Beethoven, Strauss (Richard and both Johanns) and Berlioz will be featured on classical programs around the city. At the tall Funkturm, the city's radio tower, swing, pop and disco musicians will entertain an expected 2,250 revelers. (The price tag, per person, is around $70.)

Alas, it is already too late to look for a night's stay at several of the city's grandest hotels. The elegant Hotel Adlon, for instance, which reopened last year, says it long ago finished taking bookings for 1999's New Year's Eve. Still, many leading hotels continue to have available gala packages that offer everything from champagne breakfasts and elegant banquets to candle-light dinners and late-night excursions around the city. The Hilton features a party for youths, with games, swimming, a kids' buffet and--most essential for guests who are celebrating with their children and grandchildren who are five or older--hotel-provided baby sitters.

JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS

When the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica is opened for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, 1999, it will usher in the Jubilee Year for Roman Catholics around the world. From that night until the feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2001, the Vatican has prepared a full calendar of solemn observances, including prayer vigils, ecumenical celebrations and several canonizations, over which the Pope will preside.

Starting in the summer of last year, the long-postponed restoration of many cherished landmarks inside the Eternal City--including the original entrance to the Pantheon and the front of St. Peter's--finally got under way. Parks and villas that are open to the public are undergoing extensive renovation, and work on new train lines should be completed next year.

Lodging is always expensive in Rome, and the approaching millennium will push prices still higher. A double room at the Eden Hotel, whose superb terrace restaurant has a breathtaking view of the city, will start at $685 a night, with a minimum of a week's stay required. The many nunneries and pensions in and around the city, however, still offer accommodations for less than $100 a night.

Whatever the price, for some people the journey will be worth the expense. "Rome is the birthplace of Western civilization and Christian culture," observes Joan Lewis of the Vatican Information Service. "As long as you're not looking for something outlandish like a yacht that's going to cross two time zones, this is the place to be."

CITY OF LITE?

Paris may never be the same. In its eagerness to shed some of its vaunted intellectualism, France is trying on a newer look. To cackles of delight and a few clucks of disapproval, officials in the City of Light are planning to transform their revered Eiffel Tower into a gigantic Christmas tree, adorned with Godzilla-size ornaments, for Noel 1999.

About six miles from the Eiffel Tower, construction could begin soon on another outsize and controversial millennial project: a $42 million Earth Tower rising on wooden struts, bisected by restaurant and exhibition space and crowned by a floral halo of metallic petals. At 650 ft.--a height that will require passage of a special law in parliament--it would command stunning vistas comparable to those of the Eiffel and Montparnasse. Meanwhile, the Pompidou Center, with one of the biggest collections of 20th century paintings, is scheduled to reopen its doors at midnight Jan. 1, 2000, after being partly closed since September 1997 for a complete renovation. The theme of the featured exhibit: time.

For a real New Year's treat, you may want to consider a seat on a bateau-mouche, one of the many boats that cruise the Seine serving up romantic dinners and gorgeous views. Or try to reserve a table at Maxim's, where diners can enjoy a night of dancing with a live orchestra. Warning: a taste of the good life on this particular night could set you back $1,000--and that's before you figure in the hotel bill.

--With bureau reports