Your guide to news from cruise destinations around the world

Your guide to the latest news and updates from cruise destinations and ports of call around the world. Mediterranean, Europe, Caribbean, Alaska, South America, south-east Asia, Australasia, Arctic, Antarctica, Middle East. Southampton, Barcelona, Rome, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Barbados, Panama, Norway, Dubai, Bahamas, Abu Dhabi, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington, Baltic, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, St Petersburg, Marseille, Athens, Greece, Venice, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, Santorini, Mykonos, Le Havre, Amsterdam, Bruges, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Kirkwall, Bergen, Svalbard, Iceland, Reykjavik, Costa Rica, Dominica, Puerto Rico, New York, Vancouver, Seattle, Skagway, Juneau, China, Shanghai, Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand,

Princess bookings off to a Royal start

Record bookings for the debut of Royal Princess have set Princess Cruises up for a bumper 2013, when it will have an unprecedented seven ships in Europe and another seven in Alaska. The 3,600-passenger Royal Princess, currently under construction in Italy, will set off from Southampton on her seven-day maiden voyage to Spain on June 16 next year. UK director Paul Ludlow says the importance of UK passengers has been behind the decision to bring the ship to Britain, and is delighted with the response when sales opened on Thursday. "We've seen great bookings already from the UK on the [...]

By John Honeywell| 2012-03-24T05:12:57+00:00 24 March 2012|Cruise Deals, Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|0 Comments

Boudicca takes the cruise battle north of the Border to Scotland

Of the four cruise ships in Fred Olsen's fleet, three have distinctly Scottish names. Black Watch shares emotional connections with the Highland infantry regiment and Braemar and Balmoral are, of course, named after places in Royal Deeside. As far as I know, the warrior queen Boudicca, whose name is carried on the fourth ship, never rode into battle north of the Border. And yet this is the ship which will spend most of the summer sailing out of the Clyde and the Forth. The Scottish season starts on May 7 when Boudicca arrives in Greenock at the end a three-night [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:52+00:00 21 March 2012|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|0 Comments

Kai Tak terminal ready to welcome cruise ships in place of airliners

Hong Kong's Ocean Terminal is ideally placed for the shops, restaurants and museums of Tsim Sha Tsui. Cruise passengers can walk straight off the gangway into the malls of Harbour City, and within minutes be boarding a Star Ferry from Kowloon to Wan Chai or Central. Trouble is, the pier cannot accommodate ships of more than 50,000 tons. When I arrived in Hong Kong last week on board Diamond Princess, the ship berthed at Terminal 4 in the manically hectic Kwai Chung cargo port (below), where the ship was dwarfed by the giant multi-storey lorry park that is the Hutchison [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:52+00:00 13 March 2012|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News|1 Comment

Opera House debut for Queen Mary 2

No, the Sydney Opera House has not been extended with a new wing, that dark shape at the right of the picture above is the bow of Cunard liner Queen Mary 2.. The photograph was only possible because instead of using her usual berth at the Garden Island naval base, the ship docked for the first time at the city's Circular Quay. QM2, which has spent the past 22 days circumnavigating Australia, might have been able to get close to the iconic Opera House, but there's still no way her big red funnel is going to squeeze under the Harbour [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:53+00:00 7 March 2012|Cruise Destinations|2 Comments

A gondola ride on the Silk Route

If our day in Nagasaki had been one when it was right to take the obvious excursion from Diamond Princess, Shanghai gave us an opportunity for something different. Turning our backs on the Bund and its 21st-century skyscrapers and shopping malls, the Pearl TV tower and the overcrowded Jade Buddha Temple, we set off instead to the "water town" of Zhujiajiao, an hour or so away by coach. Surrounded by four lakes, and constructed around criss-crossing canals, the settlement has inevitably been dubbed "the Venice of the East." A little optimistically, given that few of its squat buildings rise more [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:53+00:00 4 March 2012|Cruise Destinations|0 Comments

Memories frozen in time

The clues were there from the start. A sprinkling of snow on the north-facing slopes of the barren Gobi Desert as our Boeing 747 made its descent to Beijing Airport. The frozen waterways running through the airport and the city. But we were ushered seamlessly from the terminal building into a car for the three-hour drive to Tianjin, and felt the chill air only now and again when the driver wound down his window at the frequent toll points along the eight-lane highway. Transit through the international cruise terminal and Chinese passport control was quick and efficient, and it was [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:53+00:00 2 March 2012|Cruise Destinations|0 Comments

Follow me in China and Japan

Good morning from Diamond Princess and Tianjin in China. Well, I hope so, anyway. I am writing this before setting off for Heathrow Airport. By the time you read it, I should have flown to Beijing and been driven to the port. The ship is an old friend; I cruised Alaska on her 18 months ago and I am looking forward to renewing acquaintance with Captain Bob Oliver. The ports of call will be new to me, at least until we reach Hong Kong where I will be saying goodbye. There will be no time to explore Beijing, and after [...]

By John Honeywell| 2012-02-27T07:50:54+00:00 27 February 2012|Cruise Destinations|0 Comments

A new story as Infinity announces cruises from Harwich and beyond

With annual UK passenger numbers nudging the 100,000 mark, Celebrity Cruises have announced that it will have a second ship sailing from Britain next year. The 11-year-old Celebrity Infinity, carrying 2,200 passengers, will be based in Harwich during summer 2013, embarking on voyages to Norway, Iceland, and around the British Isles. Celebrity president Dan Hanrahan, in London last night to launch the company's new partnership with wine specialists Vinopolis, announced that the ship would arrive in May 2013 for a season lasting until October. It is expected to include a range of 10, 11, and 12-night voyages to the fjords [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:53+00:00 23 February 2012|Cruise Destinations, Cruise Entertainment|1 Comment

Labadee through a fish-eye

One of the reasons for inviting Blackbeard on Allure of the Seas is that he is a better photographer than me, and also has an iPhone which he can pull all sorts of cinematographic tricks with. Like these videos from our day in Labadee. He captured some of the activity on Barefoot Beach in the clip above, and you can watch the ship's departure from the island in the short film below. No doubt he would ask me to point out that they are stop-motion videos, using an app which takes a picture every second and then assembles them all [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:54+00:00 19 February 2012|Cruise Destinations|2 Comments

Lunch is sacrificed for a tour of the Mayan ruins above Mexican waves

Seven days in the Caribbean on the biggest cruise ship in the world. Diary of a week on board Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas FRIDAY: A look at the cruise ship schedule for Cozumel today had me reaching for the smelling salts. The island, off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula is slightly smaller than the Isle of Man, and it was about to welcome almost 20,000 passengers for the day, with Seven Seas Navigator, Norwegian Star, Norwegian Spirit, Ryndam, Carnival Conquest and Mariner of the Seas lining up with Allure. I needn't have worried. This is a place [...]

By John Honeywell| 2017-06-15T15:59:54+00:00 18 February 2012|Cruise Destinations|3 Comments