Ships and Cruising

I wish I could afford to travel by ship more often than my current rate of once every fifty years.
I did however manage to fulfil my ambition to cross the Atlantic Ocean, in the old fashioned way, aboard the Queen Victoria on her maiden round the world voyage from Southampton.
The beauty of the Cunard liners is that they are real ocean going ships with hotels on the decks and have a grace and magnificence that is difficult to appreciate until you get into a force 10+ gale.
Most other cruisers are sea worthy hotels with blunt fronts and no charm.

But being at sea is a marvellous and historic experience, so I derive great pleasure from TCA's excellent photographs of a variety of ships and boats that have pulled into the harbour outside his window.

I would encourage all members to take a look. ....g70-Ships-Travel.html

The Picture Gallery is there for all to enjoy and any member is welcome to start an album of their own.
Volty

volti, it is a dream of mine also, that transatlantic run is one I would love to do, sadly its hard to get the wife onto a ship, let alone one that doesnt stop at a different port every day, there is a really great video about cunard which makes you proud to be british, well worth a look. if you go to my website www.themecruisesaustralia.com, click the cunard button, then open the video. im sure you will like it. any comments on the website good or bad I would love to hear. there are some nice photos in the gallery, tca

TCA, I tried to view the video on my iMac but I just get a blank pop up window.
I will persevere. I have a Java problem that I can't resolve, is your video using java?

I will try again later on a windows machine.
Volty

to be honest I don't know, it's a youtube video, I do use java so I guess it does, computer literate to a point, i can just about manage the web site LOL

For those interested, here's the link to it on Youtube that TCA sent me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m6gpY8dWvY

Here's one that I can't watch without tears, it reminds me of our night time departure from Southampton for the Victoria's maiden transatlantic crossing.
Every ship in the area gave us a foghorn salute, including the QE2. I had never heard anything so moving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wh098yEwE

The QE2 then shadowed us all the way to New York, dodging from one side of us to the other on alternate days.

hey volti very good, i have a video i took on the Dawn Princess as we went under Sydney Harbour bridge , I will try to upload for you

Something I didn't know about the QM2 is that she has two foghorns and one of them is off the original Queen Mary.

Venice over shadowed by ships...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28728841

Wow, that's news. 90,000 doesn't get you much in cruise ship these days, in fact tow Holland America ship Ryndam and Statendam (55,00 tons) so small, which use Venice are about to undergo refits and are being sent to Australia as P&O EDEN and P&O ARIA, this will bring P&O Australian fleet to 5. Carnival have just added Carnival Legend to its OZ fleet so they have 2 and Royal Caribbean has added Voyager of the Seas to its fleet. Australia is the fasting growing cruise market in the world, up 42% in last three years (i think)