Cynthia Boal Janssens is the editor and chief blogger for AllThingsCruise.com. She is a former national president of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). She has sailed on over 40 cruises all over the world.
Monday, Sept. 6, 2022 – It has been a lively five days since we began this Mediterranean journey with Windstar Cruises. After a full day of private touring in Venice, we boarded the sailing ship Wind Surf and headed south. Several stops in Croatia and Montenegro certainly educated us on the history of this region. Each city, town or island we visited – Zadar, Hvar, Dubrovnik and Kotor – all had lessons to teach, from the early …
Today I have been excited all day. Mainly because I am finishing packing for a trip to Europe leaving tomorrow for a Med cruise! While I have been on several cruises since covid, they have taken me only as far as the Caribbean, Mexico and Bermuda. This will be the first time that I’ve been back to Europe since the covid shutdown in March 2020 and my life has changed considerably since then. The biggest change is …
Cruising in the times of Covid have sidelined many of us. For almost two years, there were no cruises at all. So not much writing about cruises to be done. The last story I wrote for AllThingsCruise was about the naming of the Sky Princess in December 2019. Finally, this August the first glimmer of cruising came back. We were invited by Viking Ocean cruises on a five-day sail around Bermuda. There were many hoops to jump …
Earlier this month I attended the naming ceremony for Princess Cruises’ newest ship, the Sky Princess. The theme of the ceremonies was “Reach for the Sky” and honored pioneering women in the U.S. Space Program. The event was held in the main theater of the ship and we all watched the huge screen as a 15-liter bottle of champagne was broken across the hull amidst cheers and confetti. As a new year, 2020, is about to begin …
ABOARD THE NCL BREAKAWAY – It has been just over a week since my family returned from our cruise to the Western Caribbean on the Breakaway. I had thought I would be able to write about the trip on a daily basis but soon learned that we all were much too busy for me to accomplish that. So I have some catching up to do. But first I want to give you some tips on planning …
Tomorrow is the big day. Nine of us – two moms, one dad, five children and me (Nona Cindy) – will board the NCL Breakaway in Miami for our first family cruise. The reason we have decided to do this is that my husband – Grandpa Chet – passed away unexpectedly in early May. This particular seven days, the last week of July, is the week that my daughters and their families flew in from San Diego …
BASEL, Switzerland — As I discussed a week ago, Viking just named seven new river ships and did a lot of celebrating. There were nearly 20 cruise journalists in attendance and Viking made our Basel visit extra interesting by inviting us to tour their operational headquarters in Basel. This turned out to be quite the treat as it gave us insight into the depth of their operations. Executive VP Tony Hoffman led us from department to …
BASEL, Switzerland – Yesterday Viking Cruises kicked off the 2019 cruising season with the naming of seven new river ships. But there was a hitch: Only two of the ships were in Basel. Two were at the shipyard in Rostock, Germany, two were in Brunsbuttel, Germany, delayed by weather and the last was in Porto, Portugal. But Viking put its creative talents to work and devised a “virtual” naming. All of the ships’ godmothers were in …
When the Celebrity Edge was introduced to the cruising world last month it touted lots of new features…a big orange thing-a-ma-jig called the Magic Carpet which goes up and down the side of the ship, a huge multi-story, multiuse room full of plants called Eden and a prow unlike any other. But all that aside, the most impressive thing that Celebrity Cruises did is pick a most unusual godmother to christen its newest creation. For those who …
In two days we will set off on another cruise adventure, and part of this trip visits a region that I haven’t visited by ship before: The Canadian Maritimes. We will be traveling on a 12-day itinerary called the “Eastern Seaboard Explorer” on the new Viking Sky. This will be our third trip this year with Viking. Last year at this time we spent two wonderful weeks venturing around the Baltic Sea on the line’s first ocean …
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