Zoë Dawes – aka The Quirky Traveller – is a travel writer.  She was recently voted Britain’s Best Travel Blogger and her website www.thequirkytraveller.com was voted in the Top 10 Inspiring Travel Websites 2010. We asked Zoë to give us a few ideas for brilliant places to visit. We never guessed that it would be good old Blighty that would take the top spot. But there it is. And Zoë really does know what she’s talking about.

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Cruises aren’t all evening dresses, tuxedos and dining at the captain’s table any more. We’ve moved on quite significantly from the traditional picture of cruises as stuffy middle-class, middle-aged affairs that you could probably only afford with a second mortgage on your house unless you were born into money.

Traditional cruise-goers may turn their noses up at the thought but you can now indulge your hobbies or passion or just get an introduction to something you’ve always wanted to do on a cruise. Here’s just a few of the sensible or otherwise quite wacky things you can do on one. (more…)

The first man-built machine to circumnavigate the world that wasn’t a ship was the Graf Zeppelin airship. In a William Randolph Hearst-financed expedition, it did the journey in 12 days and 11 hours. Zeppelins were the first commercial airliners and for a brief time looked as though they might threaten the cruise liners’ dominance of transatlantic travel. Subsequently, enthusiasm for dirigible flights was curbed by the Hindenburg crash, production was stopped completely by Goring in 1940 and the remaining Zeppelins were used for scrap metal. (more…)

Cruises have changed much in the last ten or twenty years and whilst they have not necessarily become more “democratic” they are certainly a long way from the stuffy old image of jewellery and tuxedos. Modern cruise-goers, part by preference and part because of airline-style restrictions on luggage, are starting to travel light.

If you’ve never been on one before, the logical question to ask is “What do I pack to go on a cruise?”. Here’s a brief list… (more…)