MV Astoria: the world’s oldest ocean going cruise ship to set sail for last time
- The former MS Stockholm is expected to be retired after an eventful, storied 72 years at sea
- Plus, the Spanish capital gains two grand new hotels in the coming months
Supposedly the world’s oldest oceangoing cruise ship, the MV Astoria has had quite an eventful life since setting out on her maiden voyage from Gothenburg, Sweden, 72 years ago, on February 21, 1948. Launched as the MS Stockholm, she ploughed her ice-breaking bow into the side of the SS Andrea Doria in 1956, sending Italy’s new showpiece luxury liner to the bottom of the ocean in thick, North Atlantic fog.
A few years later she was sold to an East German trade union and renamed the MS Völkerfreundschaft. It’s said that several people jumped ship to freedom during her cheap-and-cheerless cruises around the Baltic and to Cuba.
She was sold in 1985, and almost completely rebuilt by her new Italian owners in Genoa, in the mid 1990s, as a luxury cruise ship, and renamed MV Italia Prima. By 2008, when she was unsuccessfully attacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden on her way to Australia, she had been registered in Portugal as the MV Athena.
Renamed MV Astoria in 2016, she is currently operated by Cruise & Maritime Voyages, and will make her last trip for that company – from Hull, in northern England, to Norway, to view the Northern Lights – on October 18. It has been suggested that this may be her last voyage, and so likely the last chance to sail aboard this storied, historic ship.
Spanish capital gains attractive grand hotels
Hong Kong’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group (MOHG) is due to open the refurbished Hotel Ritz in Madrid, Spain, this summer. First opened in 1910, the Belle Époque property is currently joint-owned by MOHG and a Saudi Arabian partner, and so will now, rather confusingly, be called the Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid.
An opening date has yet to be announced but it will probably be after the new Four Seasons Hotel Madrid opens, in an even older and arguably more attractive building, a few blocks west, on May 15. Originally home to an insurance company when opened in 1891, its conversion to a 200-room hotel began in 2013, and its first opening as such is perhaps even more anticipated than the refurbished Ritz.
An existing third option for grand hotel aficionados, the 470-room Westin Palace faces the new Mandarin Oriental property across the city’s Neptune Fountain. Opened in 1912 as the largest hotel in Europe, its past guest list includes the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, and the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, which took over an entire floor for several months when it first arrived in Spain, in 1972. Cathay Pacific flies non-stop from Hong Kong to Madrid four times a week.
Lonely Planet publishes a guide to low-impact travel
Click the Shop link at the top of the page to find more details about the new book, which will be published on March 1.
Deal of the week – Connexus Travel’s Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix Package
Hotels in the lower price range include the Days Hotel by Wyndham Singapore at Zhongshan Park and the Ibis Singapore on Bencoolen, with higher-end properties such as Swissôtel The Stamford and Conrad Centennial Singapore offered with package prices from HK$10,290 and HK$12,090 respectively. Event ticket upgrades are also available from HK$940 for Premier Walkabout, to HK$27,710 for VIP packages.
