Gourmets will enjoy fine dining and wine tasting on France Cruises’ 14-passenger canal barge Luciole in the waterways of Burgundy. In addition, daily cooking lessons will be given by the onboard chef, and there will be a visit to the restaurant La Côte Saint Jacques (three Michelin stars) for a cookery demonstration supervised by the chef and owner, Jean-Michel Lorain, followed by a gourmet dinner.
Passengers on the MV Discovery will have the best vantage point to witness a rare annular total solar eclipse in the South Pacific near Polynesia on April 8, 2005. The ship will maneuver to find clear skies under the 15-mile-wide path of the eclipse.
Discovery World Cruises’ 19-night “South Pacific Eclipse” cruise-tour departs April 2 and visits Papeete, Moorea, Pitcairn Island, Easter Island and, in Peru, Pisco and Lima. A team of eclipse lecturers will be on board.
Bonus savings of up to $1,000 per person are being offered by Radisson Seven Seas Cruises for bookings made by Aug. 15, 2004, on the Jan. 15 and Jan. 26, 2005, sailings of the Explorer II from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Antarctica, the Falklands and the South Shetland Islands.
My husband and I took a 2-month segment of a 4-month cruise on the Saga Rose, a British ship sailing from Southampton, England. The portion of the cruise we took left Southampton on Jan. 4, ’04, and we disembarked in Sydney, Australia, on March 4. The ship returned to Southampton via South Africa.
We booked our cruise through Saga Holidays in Boston (800/343-0273). Our grade E cabin, No. 329, was central and nice.
An approaching comet designated Q4 (NEAT) is expected to be more than 2½ times brighter than Halley’s Comet. It will be brightest May 5-15, 2004, and the Seabourn Legend is making a 7-day Mediterranean cruise in May to provide ideal viewing conditions. On board to give expert commentary will be astro-journalist Dan Benedict, founder of the Eye On The Sky news service.
We had heard in the U.S. about the severe heat wave and drought that was affecting all of Europe during the summer of ’03, causing rivers to be dangerously low, so we wondered how Uniworld (Encino, CA; phone 800/257-2264), with whom we were scheduled to travel down Italy’s Po River, would handle this problem. Looking back, I think they succeeded to the best of their ability.
A reader mailed ITN a copy of her letter to Great American Travel, as follows.
This letter is to inform ITN readers of the utmost necessity of taking out travel insurance before any trip, especially with regard to interruption of a tour and, of course, reimbursement of medical expenses.
My husband, Robert, always used to fight me before our trips about the cost of this insurance, but I always won out, and it certainly paid off during one miserable episode in our travels.
My husband and I began planning our January ’04 trip to Australia and New Zealand about a year ahead. Several people mentioned that a stopover in Fiji would be a good way to end it. About that time, we read about a “Whale’s Tale day cruise.” We had our trip coordinator, ElderTreks (Toronto, Ontario; phone 800/741-7956), check it out and then made arrangements to include it in our trip.
Liverpool, England, was a “day call only” port for cruise ships until March 2012, when it received permission to be a “turnaround” port, where ships can begin and end their cruises. A new terminal is being built, and in May the port welcomed its first ship on a “turnaround” cruise. The facility expects to handle 17 turnarounds and 24 day calls in 2013, with visits from lines such as Celebrity, Fred. Olsen and Hapag-Lloyd.