Travel Maven blog

River cruising, new Viking vessels in Europe

For river cruisers in Europe, this will be a year for boning up on stories about Viking gods, goddesses, and heroes.

Viking River Cruises, largest of the many companies that operate long and low vessels on the busy rivers of Europe, is introducing six identical boats this year, all named for famed Vikings.

You might recall that Odin is the god of wisdom, Freya the goddess of love and fertility, Njord the god of wind, Aegir the god of the sea, Idun the goddess of youth and rejuvenation, Embla the mother of the human race.

Vikings Odin (pictured above in Kinderdijk, The Netherlands) and Idun floated out of Amsterdam this weekend on their inaugural voyages.

Cruising safety standards re-examined post-Concordia

Two months after the Costa Concordia sinking, leaders of some of the world’s major cruise lines spoke in public for the first time last week about the impact of the cruise disaster and the safety record of their industry.

At an annual conference and trade show in Miami, the leaders’ moods alternated between uncommonly serious, when emphasizing safety on their vacation products, to upbeat, about the public’s future plans to spend their holidays on the cruise world’s ever expanding fleet of ships.

Though it hardly ranks with the infamous Titanic sinking – fewer than three dozen people died on Costa Concordia, while thousands were rescued – the image of the ship disaster will not die soon. Modern cruise ships are not supposed to sink, and until January both cruise crews and passengers were confident that the horrors of the Titanic were merely an old and unrepeatable story line.

This story, however, will not go away easily, as questions about competence, responsibility, training, and panic remain.

New smoking rules clear the air aboard cruise ships

Travelers who loved vacationing on the Carnival Paradise, which once was a cruise ship entirely cigarette smoke free among passengers and crew, have reason to cheer. As 2011 draws toward a close, second-hand smoke at sea is dissipating.

With this year’s trend toward prohibiting smoking in cabins and in most gathering spots aboard ships, cruise lines slowly are catching up to the lifestyles of their passengers at home, where work places, public areas, restaurants, and bars are smoke free over much of North America.

As the number of smokers at sea decreases --  Carnival says that only 5 percent of its passengers say they want to smoke in their cabins – places to puff diminish.

Picture above: This outdoor section on the new Oceania Marina is one of only two places on the 1,250-passenger ship where smoking is allowed.

Luxurious Seabourn Quest cruises with a younger crowd

With bargain rates on many cruise ships at $100-$150 a day or less per person, why would a couple on vacation spend $500- $1,000 a day, each, for a cruise?

A man is his 50s asked me that question recently at a party. He was concerned also that his wife was about to book him on a luxury cruise ship full of sedentary old people.
 
It’s a legitimate financial question and an understandable concern by a physically active man who did not want to be stuck on vacation, bored and bloated, bobbing on the sea.
 
I answered by describing my recent voyages on two of Seabourn’s newest ships.

CLICK to The Travel Mavens.com for the article on Seabourn Quest and luxury cruising.

Cruising on Costa Favolosa, a naming ceremony in Trieste

As many as 10,000 local townsfolk and formally-attired invited guests watched an extravagant naming ceremony Saturday night in Trieste, Italy, for a new cruise ship, the 3,800-passenger Costa Favolosa.

Favolosa, now Costa’s largest vessel, was built near Venice, but it was the first major ship christened in ancient Trieste in 50 years. The event also was part of national celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.

Actors, musicians, and dancers provided a spectacular show at Trieste’s Piazza Unita d’Italia, said to be Europe’s biggest square. The dancers included a woman in filmy white who  soared above the audience, held aloft by helium balloons on a windy night as she moved to the sounds of a classical piano performce by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi.

Moving a household back to U.S. from Germany

Hello from Germany where I am helping my son and his family of five pack up their house and move all their belongings back to the United States after three years abroad.

All is well, or will be totally when the U.S. passport arrives for one-month-old Bethany, who will need it to make her grand entrance into the United States. The passport is in the mail. Somewhere.

Meanwhile, we are, on a Sunday, getting ready for the house packers who arrive Monday morning at 8, with a crew to pack up everything that isn't moving.

In Europe, house packing is quite a business. Now that summer is here and school is out, families are moving to new jobs, from country to country, all over the world.