Oasis of the Seas has resumed cruising toward Cozumel Wednesday afternoon after rescuing a fishing boat from the Caymans that was dead in the water with an engine that would not start. Captain Trym Selvag stopped the Oasis, sent two engineers to fix the problem (after a security team checked out the fishing boat). The…
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,…
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…
The $1.4 billion megaship–the largest passenger ship ever made, with room for 6,296 guests–is nearly half again as big as the last biggest cruise ship, RCL's Freedom of the Seas. She's as big as a supertanker or a container ship. Flatten the deck and you could launch F-18s off it. If you were sitting on…
As Germans celebrate this next week and the world watches — 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain — here are some Internet sources for remembering, with maps, pictures and perspectives. You might start with my series: Remembering the Berlin Wall and Cold War, including ideas for travelers to explore…
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and end to Germany's Iron Curtain, David Molyneaux returns for the celebrations. This is his seventh blog. Eastern Germans remember 1989 as the year of the big surprise. Decades had rolled by without much reason for hope of democracy. Then, in a matter of months, the old East German regime…