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Here comes the sun . . . and fun

Five words struck terror into the heart of top cruise ship boss Richard Fain at the naming ceremony of Celebrity Equinox. "I haven't told anyone this," said the ship's godmother, breast cancer charity campaigner Nina Barough, before asking every member of the 1,600 audience to take part in a little ritual she conducts at each of her Walk the Walk events. We all held hands for a few moments, laughing nervously, before turning to hug the person next to us and collectively bless the ship. In Richard's case, he got to hug the ship's master, Captain Apostolos Bouzakis, something else [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 30 July 2009|Cruise Ships|0 Comments
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All aboard for the Games

If QE2, the world's most famous ocean liner, ends up in Cape Town providing hotel accommodation for next year's World Cup, it looks like she will be facing competition. I hear that Holland America Line has chartered three ships to provide rooms for visiting football fans, officials and dignitaries during the four weeks of the event from June 11 to July 11. It's not a new trend. Norwegian Cruise Lines will be providing a ship to be berthed in Vancouver to add 10 per cent to the city's hotel capacity during the Winter Olympics in February next year. Norwegian Star [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 29 July 2009|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments
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Viking gods shine on Mrs Brown

A week after my return from a cruise to Iceland and Norway on board Cunard’s Queen Victoria, and it’s time to look back at what was an unqualified success in almost every way. Freyr, the Viking god of weather, was kind to Captain and Mrs Greybeard, providing T-shirt weather even in the north of Iceland, and only soaking us with persistent rain at our last port call, Stavanger. At two ports in Iceland we booked Cunard excursions. A fascinating $99 (£62) tour of the western Snaefellsnes Peninsula from Grundafjordor brought us almost within touching distance of nesting kittiwakes on the [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 28 July 2009|Cruise Destinations, Cruise Ships|0 Comments
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Cruise ship Equinox goes green

If you're looking for the green shoots of recovery in the global economy, or in the travel industry, there are more than 2,200 square yards of them - the area of almost three tennis courts - on deck 15 of a brand new cruise ship being launched in the UK this week. The Celebrity Equinox, like its sister ships Celebrity Solstice, and the yet-to-be completed Celebrity Eclipse which will be based in Southampton from next year, has a real grass lawn, which today was the venue for the world's first croquet tournament at sea. Ten croquet experts gave demonstrations of [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 25 July 2009|Cruise Entertainment, Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments
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Bumpy ride for new cruise bosses

It's been a bumpy week for the new bosses of Cunard and P&O, with their biggest ships having something of a rough ride. The Queen Mary 2, flagship of the Cunard fleet now under the management of Peter Shanks, broke her bow mooring lines during a sudden squall in Zeebrugge, Belgium, and suffered slight damage when the stern was blown into the quayside. A Cunard spokesman said some passengers returning from excursions were slightly delayed before the gangway could be set up again, and engineers inspected the hull before the ship sailed from the port a little later than scheduled. [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 23 July 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments
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One giant leap – on the ice

Not many people can claim they flew to the Moon with Neil Armstrong. Just two, in fact - Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. And only one of those got dust on his boots. But intrepid cruise passengers now have the opportunity to sail to Antarctica with Armstrong on board Lindblad Expeditions' vessel, the National Geographic Explorer. The three-week voyage leaves Santiago, Chile, and after five days on the White Continent, also calls at South Georgia and Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands before returning to Ushuaia in Argentina. The journey, which was announced as Armstrong celebrated the 40th anniversary of [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 21 July 2009|Cruise Destinations, Cruise News, Cruise Ships|0 Comments
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QE2 on the move to Cape Town

There's confirmation this morning that the former Cunard ocean liner QE2 will be moving to Cape Town in time to provide accommodation for next year's World Cup. The ship, which had sailed more than six million miles by the time she was retired last November (picture above), was bought for £50 million by a Dubai company which planned to convert her into a luxury hotel and provide her with a permanent mooring at the glamorous Palm Jumeirah. No visible progress has been made on that plan in the last eight months that the ship has languished lonely and unloved at [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 21 July 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|3 Comments
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Ships and jobs on merry-go-round

I'm back from Cunard's Queen Victoria; there's plenty of cruise news to catch up on, and a bit of rumour as well. Let's get the rumour out of the way first. Ever since QE2, the most famous liner in the world, arrived in Dubai last November, after being sold by Cunard for £50 million to a company which planned to convert it into a floating hotel, there have been reports that all was not well with the project. Nothing definite has ever been confirmed about exactly what the new owners, Nakheel, planned to do with the ship, although there have [...]

By | 2017-06-15T16:00:41+00:00 21 July 2009|Cruise News, Cruise Ships|3 Comments
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A sell-out for Cunard in Reykjavik

The sun beat down on Reykjavik today as hundreds of passengers from Cunard's Queen Victoria set out on excursions to the Blue Lagoon, the Gulfoss waterfall, the Geysir Stokkir and Iceland's other spectacular attractions. Yet more went on a whale-watching expedition, which had been the first of the 10 tours to sell out. In fact the sun had been beating down as our watches showed midnight the night before, although as we were about to put the clocks back an hour it was really only 11.00 pm. We're not quite inside the Arctic Circle, so we don't quite get to [...]

By | 2009-07-10T18:07:44+00:00 10 July 2009|Cruise Destinations, Cruise Ships|2 Comments
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