Cruise Gossip

Amusing to see the Daily Mail saying that the announcement about Cunard's new Queen Elizabeth comes "just a year after the QE2 was taken out of service." The QE2 sailed from Southampton for the last time on November 11 last year, and arrived at her retirement home in Dubai 15 days later. By my reckoning, that makes it less than four months since the order "finished with engines" was given. And the Daily Telegraph, reporting on today's announcement, says the new liner "was built at the Monfalcone shipyard near Trieste." WAS built? Who are they kidding? The shipyard workers haven't [...]

Pity those poor passengers on P&O's Aurora. It's bad enough that they were stuck in Auckland for five days and have had to miss four ports of call. They have escaped from New Zealand, but there's no escape from the next treat in store. Disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his battleaxe wife Christine are on board, eager and ready to leap onto the stage of the ship's Curzon theatre to "entertain." With the ship on a high speed dash across the Pacific to San Francisco, and only one stop along the way, there's nowhere for the passengers to hide.

There's a lavishly equipped library on the Eurodam, in the Explorations Café, which also contains the ship's public-access internet terminals. Unlike the cyber cafes on many cruise ships, it is in a prime position, high up at the bow, and adjoining the Crow's Nest bar, rather than being tucked away below decks. There are times, though, when it is more convenient to use my lap-top, and being the newest ship in the Holland America fleet, Eurodam has wi-fi throughout every cabin. Up to a point, that is. There's no signal at the writing desk by the window, and I can [...]

They don’t like to upset losers at the Oscars. For a start, the presenters never say “and the winner is . . .

More on the luxury cricket cruise I wrote about yesterday – with the news that England players Freddie Flintoff and Steve Harmison spent the night on board Silver Shadow within hours of their second innings flop in the first Test. The cricket followers on the ship must have been delighted to have the stars join them for dinner, but grass-roots fans are disgusted that the pair did not get an early night ready for extra training the next day. It’s not the first time Flintoff has found himself in hot water during a West Indies tour. During the 2007 World [...]

If the latest research is to be believed, British good manners cost lives when the Titanic went down. Our gentlemen stood back to allow “women and children first

My report yesterday that New Kids on the Block would be playing on Carnival Imagination in May demonstrated that cruise ships are not just a care home for has-been entertainers. Or maybe it didn’t, depending on your opinion. But it started me thinking about the perfect cruise entertainment. Now I know that for some people, an ideal evening is an early-sitting dinner and being tucked up in bed by nine o’clock with a cup of cocoa. After all, there might be a hectic day of shuffleboard, bridge, and napkin folding tomorrow. For others (and don’t look at me like that) [...]