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Watch a Giant Container Ship Pass Through a Lock of the Panama Canal

Ever wondered what a giant container ship passing through the Panama Canal might look like? Well, it just so happens we were visiting down there last week, and managed to stop by the Miraflores Locks, on the Pacific side, to witness a giant Dole container ship—full of pineapples, we assume—ease its way into the canal.

The entire process involves three sets of locks (Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun) and takes about 8-10 hours (though they allow multiple ships to travel along the canal at once) from one ocean to the other. But worry not. We've gone ahead and sped up the process to cram a 45-minute Miraflores Locks crossing into an easy-to-swallow two-and-a-half minute video clip. See below!

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Retro Travel / The Way We Once Traveled / Cruise Travel / Ships / → All Tags

The Way We Once Traveled: Postmarks from the Middle of the Ocean

We'll fully admit that we save our ticket stubs even sometimes our bag tags. Of course travelers of decades ago were no different; in fact, they were worse. Sometimes we dig up vintage gems that deserve to be shared. All week, we'll look at a few lost pieces of ephemera that continue to inspire.

Check out that postmark on the above postcard from 1924. It seems that this little greeting, from folks sailing onboard the SS President Grant of Admiral Oriental Line between Seattle and "The Orient," made it all the way from somewhere off the coast of Japan to a teensy-weensy town in Northwest Ohio. Serious, Google Map Tontongany, Ohio and count how many roads it has on your hands. Then think about it back in the 1920s; it boggles the mind.

The point of all this is really to draw your attention to the words of the traveler who mailed this card, as their situation onboard says all you need to know about the pace of getting from Point A to Point B in the days before airplanes and taxis and turbojet ferries. Here ya go:

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The Way We Once Traveled: 'Orchestral Selections' on the Queen Elizabeth

We'll fully admit that we save our ticket stubs even sometimes our bag tags. Of course travelers of decades ago were no different; in fact, they were worse. Sometimes we dig up vintage gems that deserve to be shared. All week, we'll look at a few lost pieces of ephemera that continue to inspire.

Water Aerobics. Mixology. A lecture on wildlife photography. Hairiest Chest Contest. These are just a few standard daily activities you'll likely find listed on the schedule of a modern cruise ship. However, it was back when passenger ships were called "liners" that schedules focused on the social, rather than the active and educational, advantages of the journey.

It's within this schedule for the old Cunard liner RMS Queen Elizabeth—her third day of a crossing from New York to Cherbourg/Southampton—that we see this for sure. Where iPad classes would be listed on a 2011 cruise shop activity list, the 1949 version favors watching horse racing or listening to the news broadcast.

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Got $189 Million? Then You've Got 5,500 Artifacts from the Wreck of the 'Titanic'

A mug from third class on the Titanic

Anyone got $189 million just chilling in the bank? If your answer is yes, then you've probably also got enough extra space to house some 5,500 artifacts raised from the ocean floor wreck of the RMS Titanic, because all that is about to be auctioned off...in one fell swoop.

That's right; if you want to buy just one piece from the massive collection, you're going to have to buy all of it, since the auction comes complete with a 19-page document of what you can and cannot do with the items. It's mostly cannot do. So there'll be no drinking your morning coffee from a steerage class mug, nor will there be fogging up a porthole with your breath, only to write "J + L = <3" with your finger. You've got to treat these items with respect, just as the salvage company has attempted to do until now:

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Movie Set Travel / Cruise Travel / Caribbean Travel / Alvin and The Chipmunks / Carnival Cruises / Ships / → All Tags

The Setting for the Alvin and The Chipmunks 'Chipwrecked' Movie is a Real Ship

The latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked!, opens today, and follows the characters we all got to know as kids as they embark on their first cruise vacation.

Most of the movie was filmed on the Carnival Dream cruise ship last January, on open decks and within the ship’s recreation areas.

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Blast from the Past: Real Photo Postcards

Walk through Times Square and at almost any of the cheapie souvenir shops in the area, you'll be able to score 10 postcards for $1. A steal for sure, but a closer look at the cards reveals that they're often outdated, faded or—worst of all—boring.

Travelers from the 1900s through the 1960s would have had a heart attack over this, since back then sending a postcard meant something. It was almost required of you to mail postcards from your destinations to your family, friends and neighbors, and the quality of the card was important.

Real Photo Postcards were popular for this reason. Printing on photo paper meant the picture would be solid, with no printing dots or gradients; it was as close to actually being there (except it was black & white). We were recently presented with this photo postcard from the heyday of the first Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth. At 724 feet long and 85,000 gross tons, she was the largest ship in the world and sailing on her meant you'd be sending a slew of photo postcards.

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Isle of Man Field Trip / Isle of Man Travel / Island Travel / Britain Travel / Boats / Ships / Photo Gallery / → All Tags

A Weekend on the Isle of Man: Setting Sail on the Steam-Packet Ferry

The Isle of Man is a mysterious place, a nearly sovereign territory out in the middle of the choppy Irish Sea between England and Ireland. What sort of people live there? What's there to see and do? These are all questions we wanted to answer, so we went ourselves...because why not? All this week we'll be sharing our experiences in this curious island destination.

We'd been in London too long. It was time for a sidetrip, and with Liverpool only two hours away by train and the Isle of Man only another two hours by ferry from there, the mini-adventure was a no-brainer. If we were actually close enough with time enough to make it to the Isle of Man, then by all means we were going to go.

Some hotel price comparisons later, we decided on a holiday package from the ferry company Steam-Packet (the only ferry company between Liverpool and Isle of Man), for 109 GBP ($170) per person for two nights' hotel and roundtrip ferry tickets. Not bad! If you're thinking of going anytime soon, the price has dropped to 99 GBP and here's the link.

Anyways, all aboard!

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This is What North Korea Calls a Cruise Ship

Bad news: it now sucks more than ever to live in North Korea. Why? Because the good ol' DPRK just launched their first cruise ship, the Mangyongbong (pictured above). About the only thing it has going for it is that it floats, plus okay also the fun-to-say name. Technically having the option of taking a cruise should mean life is tad bit better, right? Well, the ship is so sad that North Koreans are better off without it.

Want to "cruise" on the Mangyongbong? Be prepared to board from a dirt-covered dock from a town near the border with Russia, leave your cell phone behind, bed down on bare-bones mattresses in a communal space and soak up the sun from plastic lawn chairs that'll probably be blown overboard by the wind before you can get to them. What a cruise!

Luckily it's not a very long cruise; the ship only does a 1-night journey from North Korea to the the special tourist zone of Mount Kumgang on the South Korean border. It's a beautiful place, but it's also the focus of a constant ownership tug-of-war between North and South Korea, so what we're saying is this is a cruise where you should definitely opt for the extra travel insurance.

Check out more photos of the inaugural cruise here.

[Photo:AFP/Daily Mail]

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You'll Be Having the Ginger Cosmo, So Says the Cocktails Manager on the 'Queen Victoria'

When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one and we'd like to introduce you to them.

Over the last two weeks, we've given exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," the ship's acupuncturist, the actual doctor and the foodie Saucier. For this final installment, we're all about getting our drink on. Cheers.

Cruises are the ultimate all-inclusive vacation...or are they? What you will have to pay for is all that boozing—wine with dinner, gin and tonics on deck and champagne poolside—so there's a man onboard whose job it is to make the cocktail menu as tempting as possible. For the Queen Victoria, this man is James, the ship's Public Rooms Services Manager.

He may be on a boat right now, but James is head over heels for hotels, using his experience in opening both Manchester's Velvet Hotel and Malmaison to evolve the Queen Victoria's bars and lounges into singular experiences for her thousands of guests. He's been at sea now straight since 2004, also stepping onto the old Caronia, the Queen Mary 2 and even some of the smaller Seabourn ships. Thus, you can bet he knows what to drink if you're feeling the motion of the ocean a bit much: the Ginger Cosmo.

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In April 2012, All Eyes Will Be Back on the White Star Line's Liverpool Headquarters

In April 2012, legions of Titanic buffs will likely descend on Liverpool, England to remember the centennial anniversary of the ship's tragic sinking. Why? Well, the ship didn't sail from Liverpool on her fatal maiden voyage, but Titanic's owner White Star Line was registered there, earning the ship the "Liverpool" painted on her stern as city of registration.

Additionally, most of the ship's crew was from Liverpool, and the White Star building—called Albion House—was home for the company from 1898 through 1927. Thus, its historical, striped facade is something of a tourist site, which has the capability to turn a bit morbid since, according to Wikipedia, "in 1912, when news of the disaster of the Titanic reached the offices, the officials were too afraid to leave the building, and instead read the names of the deceased from the balcony."

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Even the Saucier on the 'Queen Victoria' is a Gordon Ramsay-Trained Gourmand

When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over these two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.

Last week we gave you exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," the ship's acupuncturist and its actual doctor. Now we're headed into the kitchens with Roberto, the Queen Victoria's Chef de Partie in charge of sauces.

He's just back from a month-long vacation to Bali, where he slept in an overwater bungalow and dined on fresh meals prepared in the rice fields. He's Roberto, and believe it or not, he's the chef in charge of making all the sauces for meals onboard the Queen Victoria, in the Brittania restaurant.

Oh, but it gets better. Roberto is not only a dashing English man of Italian and South African heritage who cuts a fine figure in his tall chef's hat; he's also a Gordon Ramsay-trained chef, with a CV that includes Ramsay's restaurant at Claridge's in London. And like many Londoners, Roberto feels a connection with New York, specifically with Thomas Keller's Michelin four-starred restaurant Per Se, where he comes to dine (and tour the kitchen) almost every time the QV docks in NYC.

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Photo Gallery / Cruise Travel / Ships / Cunard / Queen Victoria / First Class Travel / → All Tags

Inside Cunard's 'Queen Victoria' as She Sails the Norwegian Fjords

She's 90,000 gross registered tons, 964.5' long, goes as fast as 23.7 knots and up to 3,003 people can call her their temporary home at any given time, but these numbers mean nothing until you're onboard, feeling Cunard Line's massive Queen Victoria smoothly maneuver around lush islands in the Norwegian Fjords. The QV towers over town like Stavanger and positively dwarfs the smaller settlements of Flåm and Geiranger—other stops on her Norwegian Fjords & Waterfalls itinerary—but on the inside, she's a city all her own.

Before you sail on her—or either of her two sister ships in the Cunard fleet, the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth—you have to understand something. This is no party ship; there's no 3-foot-long plastic "souvenir" drink cups being pushed poolside, no "Hairiest Chest" competition under a hot Bahamas sun and no long buffet lines for chafing dishes full of veal cutlet.

Instead, for every "no" there, the Queen Victoria lays on the class with proper afternoon tea service, tango lessons in the two-story ballroom and formal dining with Baked Alaska desserts individually flamed in front of you. It's more active, aspirational luxury than let-it-all-hang-out vacation laziness and the ship's amenities completely reflect this approach.

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