Tag: Cruising
R.I.P. David Foster Wallace*
by Jim Benning | 09.13.08 | 9:05 PM ET
Horrible news is emerging that the widely acclaimed writer committed suicide in his Claremont, California, home Friday night. Wallace is perhaps best known for the novel “Infinite Jest,” but travel lit fans also know him for his typically footnote-laden 1996 Harper’s article, “Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise”—one of modern travel writing’s sharpest and funniest stories. (We were just singing the story’s praises a few months ago, in fact.) His 1997 appearance on “Charlie Rose” is well worth a look. Wallace was 46.
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Yahoo! BuzzCruise Line: Woman Was Alone When She Fell From Ship
by Jim Benning | 05.15.08 | 10:28 AM ET
Norwegian Cruise Line says surveillance video captured a 46-year-old New Jersey woman falling from her stateroom balcony shortly after the ship left New York on Sunday. The woman disappeared after the fall. “The details are likely to end growing speculation that foul play was involved,” USA Today reports.
The Implications of a Viable Northwest Passage
by Michael Yessis | 02.28.08 | 7:09 AM ET
We’ve touched on what a navigable passage through the Arctic will mean for international shipping and travelers. The latest issue of Foreign Affairs offers a thorough look at the economic and political implications of an ice-free Northwest Passage, something that, according to experts, could happen as soon as 2013.
Hey, Let’s Turn Gitmo Into a Cruise Ship Terminal!
by Jim Benning | 02.22.08 | 1:03 PM ET
Photo by lyng883 via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
You have to love all the rampant speculation and wild ideas floating around about Cuba tourism following news of Fidel Castro’s resignation this week. Take this USA Today report that “Cruise lines are ready to pounce on Cuba.” Um, is there any sector of the U.S. travel industry that hasn’t been ready to “pounce on Cuba” for decades? It drew a number of comments, including one from someone claiming to be a former security officer at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Cruise Passenger: ‘Up Until I Got Shot I Was Having a Great Time’
by Michael Yessis | 02.08.08 | 5:01 AM ET
Steve Storton is one hardcore cruiser. He was shot during a port call on the island of Margarita in Venezuela, “then was rushed to hospital, where docs put him in a wheelchair and x-rayed him three times before discharging him two hours later with just painkillers,” according to The Sun. He was having so great of a time that he then climbed back aboard the P&O cruise ship Oceana and completed the last five days of his trip.
Requiem for a Little Red Ship
by Abbie Kozolchyk | 12.05.07 | 11:33 AM ET
Abbie Kozolchyk never understood why anyone referred to ships as though they were women. Then, long before it sank in Antarctica, she met the Explorer.
Susan Fox Rogers: Antarctica for ‘Dreamers and Readers’
by Jim Benning | 11.28.07 | 11:59 AM ET
Photo of Ross Ice Shelf via Flickr courtesy of the National Science Foundation. Days after the ice claimed a cruise ship, Jim Benning asks the editor of a new Travelers' Tales story collection about the magnetic pull of the end of the earth
Environmentalist on Antarctica: ‘Do We Want This to Become Disneyland’?
by Jim Benning | 11.26.07 | 12:59 PM ET
The sinking of the cruise ship Explorer in Antarctica a few days ago has prompted some interesting questions, including the one posed by Jim Barnes in a story in today’s New York Times. “There’s been kind of an explosion of tourism in Antarctica,” said Barnes, who is the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition. “Do we want this to become Disneyland or do we want some controls?” While roughly 7,000 tourists visited Antarctica in 1992-93, more than 35,000 are expected this season, and because the region is outside any one country’s domain, controls seem to be few and far between.
A Wild Rescue in Antarctica
by Jim Benning | 11.24.07 | 2:45 PM ET
The hole in the cruise ship’s hull was “about the size of a fist,” according to a spokeswoman for the ship’s owner. If true, that’s all it took to sink the nearly 40-year-old Explorer, the first cruise ship built to ferry passengers in icy Antarctic waters. The G.A.P. Adventures-owned ship was in the midst of a 19-day “Spirit of Shackleton” trip when it hit submerged ice before dawn Friday, the Los Angeles Times reports. So began a harrowing ordeal that should put the usual Thanksgiving week travel headaches—congested highways, airport delays, etc.—into perspective.
Cruising as Canada’s Tourism Cure?
by Eva Holland | 10.09.07 | 7:53 AM ET
Photo by Jean & Nathalie via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Terrorism fears. New and confusing passport requirements. A slumping U.S. dollar and a surging loonie. These are a few of the reasons put forward to explain Canada’s sluggish tourism industry. But, writes Brian Flemming in a Globe and Mail opinion piece, they’re all flimsy excuses that obscure the real issue: “The real reason for the latest crisis is the failure of imagination of those involved in Canadian tourism, in both the private and public sectors. Until this imagination deficit is cured, Canada will continue to be seen worldwide as a boring, boreal tourist destination.”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: It’s a Wonderful Life
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.07 | 1:31 PM ET
Their seven wonders, our seven wonders and the wonder of the Dreamliner top the minds of wide-eyed travelers this week. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet
* From “Airworld” (pictured) to Starbucks in the Forbidden City, an alternative take on the seven wonders of the world.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
By Popular Vote, the World’s ‘New 7 Wonders’ Named
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
Where to Stay: Amsterdam
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
10 Great Places to Get in Tune, be Outdoors
World’s Best City
Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards (2007)
Florence
* Travel + Leisure’s 12th annual readers poll also ranks the world’s best hotels, islands and more.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
‘Man Overboard’: A Look at Cruise Ship Disappearances
Leo Hickman: In Search of the True Cost of Travel
by Frank Bures | 07.13.07 | 8:44 AM ET
Are travelers destroying cultures, economies and the planet? Are they making the world a better place? Frank Bures chats with the author of "The Final Call" about the ethics and consequences of world travel.
‘Man Overboard’: A Look at Cruise Ship Disappearances
by Michael Yessis | 07.06.07 | 12:20 PM ET
Carl Hiaasen’s novel Skinny Dip opens with this line: “At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess.” Perrone was tossed overboard by her husband. She survived the impact and clung to a “bale of grass,” then, with the help of a sympathetic ex-investigator, embarked on 300-plus pages of detective work and glorious revenge. When I read the book, it felt fresh. I hadn’t heard much about cruise ship crime drama or disappearances. My, how that has changed.
Meet Lorraine Artz, Full-Time Cruiser
by Michael Yessis | 06.29.07 | 10:18 AM ET
Lorraine Artz has spent at least 10 months of the year aboard a cruise ship for each of the last 20 years. At last count that’s 4,120 days, or more than 11 years of bouncy seas and buffets. Or, to put it another way, enough time to get back and forth to Mars in a spaceship 11 times. It’s not a lifestyle I’d ever want to live—I’ve cruised once, and though I’d like to try it again sometime, it can wait—but I have to admire such dedication to travel. In an interview with USA Today’s Gene Sloan, she says she doesn’t know how anyone can get bored on a cruise ship.
Dubai World Buys Queen Elizabeth 2
by Michael Yessis | 06.18.07 | 4:05 PM ET
Goodbye, high seas. Hello, Palm Jumeirah. One of the world’s grandest cruise ships, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2, has been purchased by a division of a Dubai-owned corporation and by 2009 will become yet another mega spectacle in a land of mega spectacles. According to the AP, Istithmar, a division of government-owned Dubai World, purchased the famed British ship—it has carried royalty, troops to the Falklands War and the Norovirus from Acapulco to San Francisco—for $100 million and plans to turn it into a “floating hotel, retail and entertainment destination” off the coast of the manmade Palm Jumeirah island.
Cruising with Kierkegaard
by Jim Benning | 04.23.07 | 9:56 AM ET
Photo by KellyK via Flickr , (Creative Commons).
Or at least a few smart people. Arthur Frommer notes a couple of cruise ships launching soon that will cater to intellectual travelers by providing expert lectures on a range of topics. The concept isn’t new, but Frommer suggests that moderately priced “intellectual” cruises had become an endangered species. Martin Randall of Martin Randall Travel told Frommer that the Mediterranean cruises he’ll offer next year will be “unashamedly highbrow, aimed at educated, cultivated and intellectually curious travelers.” Another ship also geared toward thinking travelers will be operated by Lord Sterling, who has acquired the trademark and passenger lists for Swan Hellenic. No word yet on whether passengers will be required to recite lines from The Decameron or don tweed before boarding.
It’s the Caribbean Cruise Anna Nicole Smith Tabloid Shore Excursion!
by Jim Benning | 04.11.07 | 8:02 AM ET
It sounds twisted, we know. And to be fair, we haven’t heard about a cruise ship officially offering such an excursion—yet. But according to a TV news report, many of the gawkers outside the Bahamas courthouse where Larry Birkhead declared his odd sort of paternity victory Tuesday were cruise ship passengers who decided the spectacle should be a part of their vacation. If that’s true, it wouldn’t be the first time tourists had taken a creepy interest in the tabloid story unfolding in the Bahamas.
Should Cruise Ships Be Required to Report Crimes Committed at Sea?
by Jim Benning | 03.27.07 | 3:53 PM ET
Why not? But amazingly, they’re not required to report crimes now, in part because so many ships sail under foreign flags outside U.S. waters. At a House subcommittee hearing on the issue today, cruise ship operators announced a voluntary plan to improve reporting. According to an Associated Press report, “Several lawmakers suggested the crime-data reporting needs to be mandatory, not voluntary.”
Why Are Cruisers So Susceptible to Viruses?
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 8:47 AM ET
Another cruise ship—this time Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas, the world’s largest—recently returned to port with hundreds of passengers reportedly ill from a norovirus. Its the latest ship to succumb to gastrointestinal bug, and yesterday Slate’s Explainer spelled out why these travelers keep on getting sick. The reasons: Close quarters, questionable food and water safety in some ports and the influx of new passengers.
Cruising: A Dreaded Norovirus Strikes Again
by Jim Benning | 11.19.06 | 10:32 AM ET
That’s what experts believe sickened more than 500 passengers aboard Carnival Cruise Lines’ Liberty ship, which docked in Fort Lauderdale today after 16 days at sea. The Sun-Sentinel paints a grim picture of the scene on the ship: “Anti-viral agents were repeatedly sprayed all over the ship and passengers said a medicinal spell lingered everywhere. Passengers told of three dozen people waiting in line for the infirmary to open every morning.” The story mentions that many cruise industry officials believe norovirus outbreaks at sea “get unfair attention because a CDC study found only 10 percent of the 232 outbreaks investigated from 1997 to 2000 were on ships or vacation settings. The rest took place in restaurants, nursing homes and schools.” Unfair attention? They get more coverage because victims are, uh, stuck on a ship.