Cruise Destinations

The UK's busiest cruise port is preparing for another hectic day on Saturday when it hosts six cruise ships for only the second time this year. Southampton's facilities - on the quayside and in the city itself - will be put under strain as more than 33,500 passengers return from holidays or prepare to embark. Extra pressure will be created as a result of on-going strike action by council workers. The cruise invasion could bring as much as £9 million of business for local hotels, shops and taxi drivers. Strictly speaking, the port does not have dedicated terminal facilities to [...]

Liverpool has offered to repay more than £5 million it received in grants so the city can adapt its new cruise terminal to accommodate ship turnarounds. The £21 million landing stage at the Pier Head - described by some as a "floating tea tray" - is within sight of the landmark Three Graces, the former Cunard headquarters, the Liver Building, and the offices of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, all built in the early 20th century. But that's as far as the heritage connection goes for the port from which millions sailed to America and Africa in the past. [...]

The itinerary planners at P&O Cruises have had more on their minds this week than 2013's world cruises. Gazing into their crystal balls, they have decided that Libya is no longer the place to be this winter, and have been re-scheduling voyages which had planned to visit Gaddaffi's capital. Adonia's 14-night Christmas cruise departing from Athens on December 20 was to have called at Tripoli on December 30 but will now visit Tunis on New Year's Eve instead. Timings of calls at other ports on the cruise have been changed, so the planned Christmas Eve excursions to Jerusalem and Bethlehem [...]

If you're announcing a series of exotic voyages to the South Pacific, then a Polynesian tiki bar in the heart of London is probably an appropriate place to do it. And it's a fair bet that many of those who turned up for the launch of Cunard and P&O's 2013 world cruises were drawn as much by curiosity about the one-time hang-out of young Royals as a desire to be first to get their hands on the brochures. Two floors down, deep beneath the streets of the West End, the Mahiki Club is where Princes William and Harry used to [...]

As a regular traveller on the London Underground, I'm no fan of Bob Crow, whose outdated tactic of calling his RMT union members out on strike at the drop of a hat disrupts life for millions of people. I've no time for the Daily Mail either, with its spiteful news agenda and its persistence in believing that every substance known to man can either cause cancer or cure it, and in some cases is capable of both. But it's a bit rich when the Mail takes Crow to task for flying to a Caribbean cruise in January, just a day [...]