Cruise Destinations

It’s Stir-Up Sunday this weekend, when households traditionally mix their Christmas puddings. Cruise lines are intent on getting us to focus our attention a little further into the future, to 2018. PRINCESS CRUISES took over a hotel swimming pool in central London last night to announce their biggest-ever season of ex-UK cruises. For the first time, the line will offer more than 1 million bed-nights on sailings to northern and southern Europe. The 2,700-passenger Sapphire Princess (above), built in Japan in 2004, will make its maiden visit to Europe to sail 16 cruises from Southampton between April and October. Fares from £799 for [...]

Barcelona, the busiest cruise port in Europe, is to get a new passenger terminal, with an investment of €30 million from Carnival Corporation. Construction work is expected to start in 2016 and the new facility is scheduled to open in time for the 2018 summer cruise season. Barcelona currently has four cruise terminals – one operated exclusively for Carnival brand ships – on its main breakwater jetty. There are two more closer to the city centre, next to the World Trade Centre building. The new building, which is likely to handle passengers travelling with Cunard, P&O Cruises and Princess, as well [...]

A Chinese lion dance marked the keel-laying of Princess Cruises’ third Royal class ship in the Italian shipyard where sister ships Royal Princess, Regal Princess, and P&O Cruises Britannia were built. The 3,600-passenger vessel will follow rival Quantum of the Seas, operated by Royal Caribbean, to be based in Shanghai when it is launched in summer 2017 and will have a number of features tailored for the Chinese market. The ceremonial placing of the first 500-ton section of the ship in dry dock at Fincantieri’s Monfalcone yard near Trieste was also celebrated with a blessing by a Catholic priest. Julie [...]

MSC Cruises is to become the first major operator to base a ship in Cuba. The company has cancelled MSC Opera’s winter season sailing in the Canaries in order to base it in Havana. The move comes as President Obama bids to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Castro regime and lift the trade embargo which has been in place for half a century. American operators are still not free to trade with Cuba. British lines such as Thomson, Fred Olsen and Saga have visited Cuba in recent years, but none has home-ported a ship for the length of time planned [...]

Back in 2010, I travelled on a memorable cruise around the tip of South America on board the delightful Via Australis (above) – a 136-passenger ship that took me as close as I have ever been to glaciers and penguins. In January this year, visiting Chile on a cruise aboard Golden Princess, it was something of a disappointment to see sister ship Mare Australis (below) laid up in Punta Arenas. She looked rather forlorn, hauled out of the water and sitting on wooden blocks. I was delighted to discover last night that Mare Australis has a new life, and a [...]