How to take pictures of lights in the dark?

I'm having trouble finding a setting for my camera to take good pictures in the dark of lights. I'm going down to a resort with the fam this weekend and they have beautiful christmas lights but I can't figure out how to capture them with my camera. I have a Nikon D3000 so any help or tips would be greatly appreciated thanks.

Make the shutter speed longer and the exposure smaller

The only good setting on a DSLR, especially like night time is Manual mode. You better start reading the instructions that came with your camera soon if you want to learn how to use your camera properly by this weekend.

Auto exposure modes will never get this right… The lights are always blown out.

You must use manual exposure mode, and adjust the shutter speed to get the lights properly exposed in the shot. It will be much faster than you think it should be. You can take just the lights, or you can back the shutter speed down to get some of the surrounding as well, but at some point it will be one or the other. The amount of ambient light will set that point.

If you have an external flash, there's a way to light the shot so you can see the surrounding, but not overpower the lights. If you don't have one, nevermind. You can't do this with the pop-up flash.

What you need to do is set your camera to manual and also set the ISO to 400. When youre set to manual, it should show up as M in the display. Set the aperture (f number) to somewhere between 4 and 11. Start with 4 and experiment with shutter speeds of 250 to start with. The lower the shutter speed, the more light the camera will record. Experiment with shutter and aperture until you find the right combination for the image you're looking for. I wish I could tell you what settings to use, but all situations are different.

Use a tripod and slow shutter speed.