Crystal Extend Golf-Themed Cruises

In a real “hole-in-one” for golf fans, Crystal Cruises is adding a golf theme to its 14-night Hawaiian Islands sailing this December. The round-trip from Los Angeles on board Crystal Symphony joins two other golf-themed cruises already scheduled on Crystal Serenity this year: an 11-night British Isles voyage departing July 22 and an 11-night Iberian Adventure around Portugal and Spain departing November 27, with legendary pro golfer Billy Casper headlining all three voyages.

With 51 PGA tour wins, many consider Casper the best putter of his era. On each cruise, guests can absorb stories and tips during informal lectures by Casper and other athletic stars, such as Emmy-winning sportscaster Jim Huber. They can also mingle and play with the PGA pros at some of the most stunning championship courses in the world, including:

· Poipu Bay (Kauai) - top Hawaiian course surrounded by ancient places of worship

· Royal Portrush (Belfast) - designed by course-architect great, Harry Colt

· Carden Park (Liverpool) - Jack Nicklaus/Golden Bear “thinking golfer’s” fairway with spectacular views

· Royal Dublin (Dublin) - Ireland’s second-oldest links

· El Saler (Valencia) - one of Golf Magazine’s “100 Greatest Courses in the World”

· Golf Club Del Sur (Canary Islands) - home to several PGA European tour competitions, surrounded by 8,000 palm trees

· Palheiro (Funchal) - coastal ridge greens on a 200-year-old estate.

Crystal provides transportation, caddies, warm-up time, lunch, ‘19th hole’ get-togethers, TaylorMade club rentals or cleaning of clubs and shoes, team-pairing, parties, awards and private clinics with PGA instructors like John Clark and Bill Stutzer.

Crystal’s Feng Shui spa and gym, personal trainers, nutrition and exercise classes, exclusive workout equipment and dietary choices also offer guests extensive opportunities to enhance their health and fitness regimes on every sailing.

Prices for the 14-night Pacific Cost Holiday voyage around Hawaii (sailing Dec 21) start from £5,783 per person, including return flights, transfers, 14 nights in a deluxe stateroom with all meals and soft drinks, and port taxes, plus $500 per person onboard credit.

Prices for the 11-night Emerald Isles voyage start from £4,266 per person, and for the 11-night Iberian voyage from £3,174, both with $1,000 per person onboard credit.

For more info, visit www.crystalcruises.co.uk or contact the UK's leading luxury cruise agents of The Cruise Line Ltd on 0800 008 6677.

Crystal Expands World Jewish Culture Exploration

With increased participation in Jewish heritage tours, luxury cruise operator Crystal Cruises is expanding its related programming in 2011. Scheduled are over a dozen Crystal Adventures that explore Jewish life, past and present, around the world in or near Mumbai, Miami, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Hamburg, St Petersburg, Rome, Dublin, Jerusalem/Ashdod and Odessa.

Each tour gives an overview of a culture within a culture, while also providing intimate connection with spaces, exhibits, artefacts, traditions and people that bring the international Jewish narrative to life. Among the highlights:

· St Petersburg: Discover how this resilient Russian Jewish community survived Communist oppression, war and hardship to flourish today, as demonstrated through its people, community centres, musi, and an intimate home visit.

· Mumbai: Visit three synagogues ranging from Baghdadi to Bene-Israel congregations.

· Copenhagen: Learn how 99% of Denmark’s Jews survived the Holocaust at the Museum of Danish Resistance.

· Dublin: Take in the social, legal and political contributions of the Irish-Jewish community; see the first dedicated day school and home of Israeli ex-President Chaim Herzog.

· German Concentration Camps: Explore Neuengamme, which housed 100,000 prisoners outside Hamburg, and Berlin’s Sachsenhausen, which became the blueprint for all other camps.

· Rome: Walk through the 2,000-year-old Jewish Quarter of Rome.

While most 2012 excursions are still in development, Crystal is planning a Jewish heritage tour of Shanghai for its 2012 World Cruise.

For reservations, visit http://www.crystalcruises.co.uk/ or contact the UK's leading luxury cruises specialist of The Cruise Line Ltd.

Crystal's Northern Europe Sensory Adventures

Feel perfectly-chilled vodka slide down your throat while sitting snugly inside a Scandinavian "ice bar"; smell fresh-cut grass while swinging your 9-iron across championship golf courses in Ireland; hear the Russian Imperial Guard march to symphonic crescendos while welcoming you to the Royal Catherine Palace; taste homemade goat caramel among Norwegian fjords; and view Stockholm by hot-air balloon.

These are but a sampling of the extraordinary "sensory adventures" guests can savour as part of Crystal Cruises’ Northern European voyage collection that begins this May. Other shore-side excursions include:

Pop culture-related destinations such as Stieg Larsson’s Stockholm; the Beatles’ Liverpool; Belfast’s Titanic shipyard; St Andrews University, where Prince William and Kate Middleton met; and the Da Vinci Code’s Rosslyn Chapel in Edinburgh

Historical journeys related to Vikings in Stockholm, Dublin and Roskilde (near Copenhagen); genealogical emigration and the Cold War in Hamburg; and life behind Berlin’s Iron Curtain

Architectural tours spanning the Art Nouveau in Ålesund, Norway to the Modern in Berlin, plus eco-conscious trips like bird-watching in Runde Island (near Ålesund) and Shetland; kayaking the Finnish Archipelago (Helsinki); and exploring the wind-powered town of Paldiski (near Tallinn) by 4x4.

Adrenalin-fuelled adventures such as racing rally cars in Estonia; cosmonaut training, including zero-gravity weightlessness, near Moscow; and, in Crystal’s most over-the-top excursion of 2011, flying a MiG fighter jet over Russia - for $39,300.

Expanding on its “You Care, We Care” voluntourism initiative, Crystal is also offering a couple of excursions where guests can “give back” by packing and donating food at the Estonian Food Bank or volunteer at the Rostock Zoological Garden. These excursions are complimentary with Crystal Cruises, covering all logistical arrangements and costs.

Prices for Crystal’s Northern European voyages start from £4,207 per person (based on a May 22 departure), including free return economy flights, 11 nights in a deluxe stateroom with picture window, with all meals, soft drinks and port taxes.

In addition, as part of Crystal's "All Inclusive - As You Wish" promotion, guests on this voyage will also receive onboard spending money of $1,000 per person, which can be spent on shore excursions, spa treatments, alcoholic beverages, purchases in the onboard boutiques, gratuities or Vintage Room experiences.

For reservations, see www.crystalcruises.co.uk/ or contact the UK's leading luxury-cruise experts of The Cruise Line Ltd on 0800 008 6677.

Iceland, Dublin, Faroe Isles and St Kilda

By guest blogger Steve Newman

To many of us, a cruise is made by the amount of wildlife we see from the deck or on land when taking organised excursions. To this end, Swan Hellenic has partnered with Marinelife, the marine conservation research charity, to bring a daily wildlife image blog to cruise passengers and the public alike.

The Marinelife team has been recording all sightings and engaging with passengers on board the Minerva throughout her visit to Iceland with a programme of presentations and deck watches. Marinelife’s team is writing a daily blog on the Swan Hellenic website to keep the general public up to date with a range of spectacular encounters, which include many hundreds of dolphins of multiple species, a Humpback Whale mother-and-calf pair and sightings of the infamous Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

Minerva will be returning to Iceland sailing on a round trip from Portsmouth from 21 July - 05 August 2011. She will be visiting four ports on the “Land of Fire,” including the capital Reykjavik. Iceland is place renowned for its ice fields, volcanic springs and thundering waterfalls. The ship will also call at Dublin and Torshavn in the Faroe Isles.

Apart from elation at the coastal scenery and the wildlife, there is sadness on this trip, too. It rather depends on how it affects you, but I defy anyone not to be moved when you’re on St Kilda. Fifty miles out from the Western Isles, even as you start to approach you wonder how people could have lived here. This feeling is enhanced when you pass where the young men climbed the cliffs to collect seabird eggs in swells they would have regarded as nothing but have many visitors clinging to the rail.

Surviving until the 1930s, when they asked to be evacuated, you wander among their stone houses (above) now numbered and marked with the occupants' names, trying to imagine how they eked out a living here and marvelling at their dry-stone walling skills. The sadness comes when you discover that in just one egg collecting trip, almost half the young men of the island were lost in heavy seas.

Having visited both here and Iceland, I can assure you you’ll be left with memories that will stay with you for ever.

For those wishing to know more, Swan Hellenic will be exhibiting at the Cruise Show in Birmingham in October.

For more info in the meantime, go to http://www.swanhellenic.com