New York and Chicago, for example, are hugely popular at Christmas time, with outsize Christmas trees, glittering holiday lights, and decorated shop windows.

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Irbil has a glittering airport, European-styled traffic lights, well-paved roads and highly functional infrastructure.

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In these photos, you can see the city lights of Minneapolis and Chicago glittering against the night sky.

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We are here hours before we even realize there is a terrace, with a glittering view of the Regent Street Christmas lights, so we feel a childlike awe to be high up amongst them, rather than viewing them from the top deck of one of the red buses way down below.

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