1. Barbados for independence
Holidaymakers normally visit Barbados for its beaches and swanky hotels, but next November you can take part in the festivities marking 50 years of independence. The island was ruled by Britain for more than 300 years and retains a quirky British charm, but the annual Independence Day celebrations, culminating in a national holiday on November 30, are a Bajan affair, featuring sporting events, fairs, festivals and parades. A competition to choose a 50th-anniversary song is under way.
P&O Cruises’ (pocruises.com) two-week Eastern Caribbean voyage, a round trip from St Lucia departing November 12, is ideal for passengers who want to join in the celebrations. The ship, Britannia, spends two full days in Barbados mid-cruise. From £1,549 per person including flights.
Offering a chance to see more of the island, Thomson Cruises (thomson.co.uk/cruise) has two-week cruise-and-stay holidays from Barbados, including a week aboard Thomson Discovery and a week at the Coconut Court Hotel in Hastings. From £1,518 per person departing November 13, including flights.
If flying does not appeal, Fred Olsen Cruise Lines (fredolsencruises.com) has a 32-night round trip from Southampton that spends two days in Barbados. From £2,999 per person departing November 12.
Windstar Cruises (windstarcruises.com) and Seadream Yacht Club (seadream.com) offer more luxurious voyages from Barbados next November, which can each be combined with a few days in a hotel. A one-week cruise from Barbados to St Martin with Seadream costs from £1,866 per person departing November 26. Hotel options include Port Ferdinand (portferdinand.com), from $650 per night for a one-bed apartment, or Sandals Barbados (sandals.co.uk), from £885 per person for four nights from November 22-26.
• Caribbean cruises: the ultimate guide
2. Denmark for Shakespeare Anniversary
Next August Denmark celebrates 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare with three weeks of theatre, cinema and concerts at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore (Helsingør in Danish), believed to be the setting for Hamlet. Festivities start on August 1, but Saga Cruises (saga.co.uk/cruises) is getting in early with a 15-night Shakespeare-themed round trip from Dover that calls at Hundested, 30 miles from Kronborg. On board there will be sonnet workshops, performances of Hamlet and Macbeth, and even Shakespearean dishes on the menu. From £3,269 per person departing May 6.
Sailing a 14-night Baltic Highlights round trip from Southampton, Cunard’s (cunard.co.uk) Queen Elizabeth will be moored in Copenhagen, about 40 minutes from Elsinore, on August 6; an excursion is expected to visit the castle and the Maritime Museum nearby. From £1,999 per person departing August 2. Viking Cruises (vikingcruises.co.uk) visits Kronborg on its Viking Homelands cruise from Stockholm to Bergen. From £5,199 per person departing August 7, including flights. The tour, from Copenhagen, costs £114 per person.
• Baltic and Northern Europe Cruises
Families visiting Copenhagen on Celebrity Cruises’ (celebritycruises.co.uk) 14-night Scandinavia and Russia round trip from Southampton next June can join a four-hour treasure hunt around Kronborg and Elsinore during which they will learn about the castle, its history and the wars fought there through various team challenges. From £1,699 per person departing June 5 (£499 for children sharing a cabin). The excursion costs US$149.75 (£100) per person.
3. Portugal, to celebrate wine
Take a river cruise in Northern Portugal and raise a glass of port to celebrate 260 years since the founding of the Douro Wine Company. If that’s not reason enough to visit, then how about the lure of cruising the picturesque Douro on a luxurious new ship?
• The top 5 cruise holidays in Portugal
The 96-passenger Scenic Azure is a scaled-down version of Scenic’s (scenic.co.uk) Rhine and Danube river boats (dubbed “Space-Ships”, each holds around 169 passengers) and is designed to navigate the smaller locks on the Douro. Eight-day round trips from Porto cost from £1,995 per person departing October 13 or 20, including flights.
CroisiEurope (croisieurope.co.uk) and Riviera Travel (rivieratravel.co.uk) also operate cruises on the Douro, while Viking River Cruises (vikingcruises.co.uk) offers 10-day holidays (with two nights in Lisbon and seven on the river) on the new 106-passenger Viking Osfrid. From £1,845 per person departing April 17, including flights.
AmaWaterways (amawaterways.co.uk) sandwiches a one-week cruise from Porto to Vega Terrón between three nights in Lisbon and three in Madrid. From £3,169 per person departing April 2, including flights. Saga (http://ift.tt/1PqwvSQ) has new four-night cruises on the Douro on the 30-passenger Spirit of Chartwell, the “royal barge” that the Queen sailed on during the 2012 Diamond Jubilee celebrations. The cruise is paired with three nights in a pousada (luxury traditional hotel). From £1,499 per person departing May 1, including flights.
Passengers joining cruises in Porto can fly with British Airways (ba.com) from February. It has four flights a week between Gatwick and Porto – on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday – priced from £35 per person one way. TAP Air Portugal has two flights a day from Gatwick. Add a couple of days in the city to dine at RIB Beef & Wine, Porto’s newest gastronomic hot spot at the Pestana Vintage Porto hotel (pestana.com).
4. France, for the Somme anniversary
Two years after the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, the world will commemorate 100 years since the start of the Somme offensive in France on July 1, 1916. It was one of the bloodiest battles in history, with more than one million men killed or wounded. A visit to the battlefield and Thiepval Memorial, erected in memory of 72,000 British and South African soldiers missing in action, is among excursions on European Waterways’ (gobarging.com) six-night war-themed barge cruise from Béthencourt-sur-Somme to Paris, departing May 29. In the Forest of Compiègne, visit the clearing where the Armistice was signed in a train carriage on November 11, 1918. From £3,290 per person.
• Somme anniversary: great battlefield tours
Avalon Waterways (avaloncruises.co.uk) is marking the centenary with a nine-day First World War-themed cruise from Amsterdam to Namur in Belgium. War historian Nigel Jones, author of Peace and War: Britain in 1914 will be a guest lecturer, and an excursion from Ghent to the battlefields and war graves in Eastern Flanders is included. From £1,841 per person departing April 4, including flights.
• The best First World War battlefield tours for 2016
Noble Caledonia (noble-caledonia.co.uk) has a six-night Great War cruise from Lille to Ostend that visits the war tunnels beneath Arras, the “trench of death” in Diksmuide and Passchendaele Museum. From £1,595 per person departing September 18, including flights or rail travel.
5. Hawaii, to remember Pearl Harbor
From the First to the Second World War, and the 75th anniversary of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. More than 2,300 sailors, marines and civilians were killed in the bombing, which damaged or destroyed around 30 ships, including the battleship USS Arizona. She was sunk with the loss of 1,177 crew, including 21 members of the ship’s band. The anniversary of Pearl Harbor is observed each year; in 2016 it will be commemorated by a performance of mass bands featuring student musicians from the US and Japan.
Norwegian Cruise Line (ncl.co.uk) has a seven-night voyage around the Hawaiian islands, a round trip from Honolulu, about 12 miles from Pearl Harbor. From £979 per person departing November 26. Arrive a couple of days early to see the Waikiki Holiday Parade, an annual event held the Friday after Thanksgiving in memory of those who died at Pearl Harbor, or stay on for the December anniversary.
• Hawaiian highs: what to do on Oahu, Big Island and Maui
Hotel groups including Hyatt, Hilton and Sheraton offer accommodation in Honolulu, and Four Seasons is opening a resort at nearby Ko Olina in June 2016. From $475 (£318) per night for a stay during December 2016.
You can visit Pearl Harbor alone, but excursion company Viator has an in-depth tour that visits the USS Arizona Memorial, which straddles the hull of the wreck, and includes a guided tour of the USS Bowfin submarine, the Pacific Aviation Museum and the battleship USS Missouri, known as Mighty Mo, where the Japanese signed the surrender documents in 1945. From $91.88 (£61) per person for a 9.5-hour tour.
Un-cruise Adventures (un-cruise.com) has one-week voyages from Moloka’i to Hawaii’s Big Island on the 36-passenger Safari Explorer, with time for swimming, snorkelling and hiking. From $3,795 (£2,544) per person departing November 26.
6. The Danube, for Hungarian history
Sixty years after Russian tanks rolled into Budapest to suppress the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule, the city faces a bitter-sweet anniversary – on one hand remembering the estimated 2,500 Hungarians killed in the violence, on the other celebrating its growing popularity on the world stage. In November, Budapest beat the likes of Vienna and Rome to be voted the second-best city to visit in Europe by readers of Condé Nast Traveler.
• Why the Danube is ideal for your first river cruise
Whether commiserating or celebrating, river-cruise passengers visiting in 2016 are spoilt for choice, with Viking River Cruises, AmaWaterways and Amadeus River Cruises among many companies that use Budapest as the start or end port of Danube cruises heading west to Germany or east towards the Black Sea. Titan Travel’s (titantravel.co.uk) 10-day Eastern Europe Explorer pairs seven-night sailings from Budapest to Bucharest operated by Uniworld River Cruises with two nights in the Romanian capital. From £2,299 per person departing April 11, including flights.
For pre or post-cruise stays in Budapest, the five-star Prestige Hotel (prestigehotelbudapest.com) opened close to St Stephen’s Basilica last summer. It houses Costes Downtown Restaurant, awarded the first Michelin star in Hungary. Nearby Aria Hotel is a new five-star property with double rooms from €222 (£162) per night this winter. The River Cruise Line’s (rivercruiseline.co.uk) Danube cruise-and-stay holiday combines three nights at the Novotel in Budapest with a four-night cruise to Passau. From £899 per person departing June 6, including flights.
7. The USA, for space travel
At the Space Centre Houston, a Boeing 747 shuttle carrier aircraft and replica shuttle join the exhibits from January. Visitors can climb aboard both the replica and the aircraft, which carried space shuttles 223 times, and learn about their impact on space exploration.
A few days in Houston are easily added to the start or end of a Western Caribbean cruise from Galveston with companies including Disney Cruise Line (disneycruiseline.co.uk) and Carnival Cruise Line (carnival.co.uk). Royal Caribbean International (royalcaribbean.co.uk) has seven-night cruises; from £836 per person departing September 11. For those who can get away soon, Princess Cruises (princess.com) has voyages from Houston until April. From £563 per person for seven days, departing March 6.
• Space tourism: 10 ways you can leave planet Earth
Western film buffs should consider adding a few days in Fort Worth, 4.5 hours’ drive from Houston, which has a major exhibition based on the television mini-series Lonesome Dove. Based on the eponymous novel by Larry McMurtry, it drew audiences of 26 million when broadcast in 1989. A reunion in March, with cast members including Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, is sold out, but between January 15 and June 19 there are exhibitions showing costumes, props and photographs. The highlight is on March 28 and 29: an outdoor screening of the mini-series in Sundance Square in downtown Fort Worth.
8. Russia, on the Tolstoy trail
A new six-part adaptation of Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace, starring James Norton and Lily James, is being screened on BBC One from January. A rollercoaster tale of love, nobility and broken promises, set against Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, it is expected to get hearts fluttering and inspire viewers to want to see more of that great country. One way is a river cruise between Moscow and St Petersburg that includes time in both cities and visits ancient churches, monasteries and museums along the way.
Titan Travel (titantravel.co.uk) has 10-night voyages next summer. From £1,249 per person departing May 21. Or choose Noble Caledonia’s (noble-caledonia.co.uk) 10-night Ancient Russia and her Waterways cruise for an evening of ballet or opera in Moscow or St Petersburg. From £1,745 per person for monthly departures from May to September. On Scenic’s 15-day voyages you’ll meet an astronaut, visit the Moscow Circus and attend a private ballet concert in St Petersburg. From £5,390 per person departing July 10.
To see more of Russia, pair a cruise with a journey on the world’s longest train line. This year the Trans-Siberian Railway, stretching 5,770 miles from Moscow to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East, marks 100 years since its opening. Captain’s Choice (captainschoice.co.uk) is celebrating the centenary by offering a 17-day rail trip on the luxury Golden Eagle train along the entire route, passing through remote Siberian towns and seven time zones. From £11,665 departing June 3.
9. Costa Rica, thanks to new flights
Visiting the rainforests and national parks in Costa Rica will be much easier for UK holidaymakers from April, when British Airways launches new twice-weekly flights from Gatwick to the capital, San José. Journey Latin America (journeylatinamerica.co.uk) and Rainbow Tours (rainbowtours.co.uk) are among companies offering wildlife-themed holidays in the country, but this is also prime territory for small-ship cruise lines Un-cruise Adventures and Lindblad Expeditions (expeditions.com). Each has voyages around the country, with hiking and kayaking tours in the rainforest, combined with a transit through the Panama Canal.
• 29 reasons you should visit Costa Rica right now
Variety Cruises, sold in the UK by Seafarer Cruises (seafarercruises.com), has eight-day voyages from Puntarenas to Colon that allow time for swimming and snorkelling between the rainforest tours. From €2,295 (£1,658) per person departing March 6. The itinerary will be lengthened to 10 days in winter 2016/17 to allow more time in Puntarenas and a cruise around Gatun Lake.
New for 2016, Windstar Cruises has two-night pre- or post-cruise tours to Arenal Volcano and Monteverde Cloud Forest, or a four-night trip to Tortuguero National Park, named after its turtles. From $999 (£670) per person for two nights. Seven-day round trips from Puerto Caldera on Windstar’s 212-passenger motor ship Star Breeze cost from $2,599 (£1,745) per person departing March 12.
• Costa Rica uncovered
Noble-Caledonia’s 11-night voyage from Puntarenas to Puerto Limon in 2017 includes visits to national parks and canoe trips up rivers in search of wildlife, exotic birds and endemic plant species. The one-off cruise, on the sailing ship Sea Cloud II, includes a daytime transit of the Panama Canal. From £5,795 per person departing March 1, 2017.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét