Travel Weekly Blog

Greetings from sunny Venice where the cruise giant Carnival has unveiled its newest superliner, Carnival Freedom.

The Italian city is a remarkable location for these monsters of the sea to be based. Freedom was built in the same shipyard where Cunard's Queen Victoria is taking shape close to where it is moored today offering amazing views of Venice.

I thought I'd share a few pics of the view from the Lido deck of the 3,400-passenger vessel which was home for less than 24 hours to a selection of 160 UK agents including four of the five members of the Travel Weekly Cruise Club who we are keeping a close eye on this year as they strive to grow their cruise business. More in our Carnival Freedom photoset at Flickr.com.

The agents flew out on a special charter flight from Stansted on Sunday morning, meanwhile a Travel Weekly and Carnival group flew EasyJet from Gatwick on a even earlier flight - another 5am start!

All went remarkable smoothly except for two stray boxes our very own Richard Johnson was transporting from the UK packed full of copies of last week's Travel Weekly.

I hope the good people of EasyJet are enjoying our coverage of Dynamic Packaging Month - it was obviously such a good read they couldn't resist keeping a few hundred copies for themselves.

As with all inaugurals, Carnival put on a good show for its invited guests, the only hitch coming ahead of the ceremonial champagne smashing moment when the PA system in the ship's theatre refused to play ball.

Sadly the gremlins were still up to their tricks by the time the show, a Beatles tribute, started, which featured, in a way only cruise ship shows can, a mock red London bus and telephone box and a hitherto unknown athletic dance routine by the Fab Four.

Lee Hayhurst, deputy news editor