The ruling means that Cunard, which has offered weddings on its ships for the past five years and has married over 250 couples, is one of the first British cruise lines to be able to conduct same-sex wedding ceremonies at sea.
“Cunard is proud to become among the first cruise lines to offer same-sex marriages at sea,” said Josh Leibowitz, senior vice president, Cunard North America. “Cunard has brought people together through travel for over 175 years, and we’re proud to mark another milestone in our company’s history as we welcome our first gay marriage booking and many other marriages to come.”
Wedding ceremonies will be performed by the ship’s Captain* and the marriage license will be issued by Bermuda.
Same-sex couples can now purchase a Cunard Wedding at Sea package, which includes:
A romantic ceremony at sea conducted by the Captain*
Wedding ceremony venue with floral arrangements
Traditional wedding music
Services of the on-board Wedding Coordinator
Attendance of a professional photographer at the ceremony
Commemorative wedding certificate
An official copy of the marriage certificate
The cost of the license fees
A bottle of Champagne in the cabin on arrival
Champagne for a toast after the ceremony
Invitations and thank you notes
Wedding outfit pressing service
For more information about Cunard, or to book a voyage, contact your Travel Consultant, call Cunard Line at 1-800-728-6273 or visit www.cunard.com.
For travel agents interested in further information, please contact your Business Development Manager, visit OneSource or call Cunard toll free at 1-800-528-6273.
*If the Captain is unable to conduct the ceremony, the Deputy Captain will be asked to conduct on their behalf.
CunardDefining true excellence at sea with over 176 years of legendary voyages, Cunard is the operator of luxury ocean liners Queen Mary 2®, Queen Victoria® and Queen Elizabeth®. Renowned for impeccable White Star Service, gourmet dining and world-class entertainment, all three Queens offer luxury on a grand scale in Britannia, Britannia Club, Princess Grill and Queens Grill accommodation. Cunard is the only line to offer regularly scheduled Transatlantic service and continues the legacy of world cruising which it began in 1922.
Awarded ‘#1 Mega-Ship Ocean Cruise Line‘ by Travel + Leisure’s 2017 and 2016 World’s Best Awards and ‘Best World Cruise Itineraries’ and ‘Best Trans-Atlantic Itineraries’ by Porthole Cruise Magazine’s 2016 Readers Choice Awards, Cunard is a proud member of World’s Leading Cruise Lines, a part of Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK), the largest cruise vacation company in the world. Together Cunard, Carnival Cruise Line, Fathom, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (UK) operate 102 ships visiting over 700 ports around the world and totaling 226,000 lower berths.
THE ISRAELI OPERA TO HOST TWO FESTIVALS IN JERUSALEM AND ACRE THIS SUMMER
(Photo Credit: Yosi Sebkar-Selam)
The Israeli Opera,
Israel's principal opera company, will once again offer two exciting
summer festivals, both staged in spectacular outdoor settings. The Jerusalem Opera Festivalwill take place from June 22-25, 2016 at venues throughout the city. The Sultan's Pool will serve as the stage for the main production of Opera Paradiso - Pretty Woman Meets The Fifth Elements, an opera combining clips from popular Hollywood films with vocal soloists. The Akko Opera Festival, from July 28-30, 2016, will be held in the northern Old City of Acre.
Performances will include pieces from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well
as an original music composition exploring the sounds of the Spanish,
Jewish and South American musical traditions.
For more information about the Summer Opera Festivals, click here.
ISRAEL'S MIDBURN FESTIVAL WILL BRING 8,000 PARTICIPANTS TO THE DESERT
More than 8,000 participants are expected to attend this year's Midburn Festival from June 8-12, 2016. The Israeli "Burning Man" community will build a temporary city near Sde Boker in the Negev Desert, comprised of themed campgrounds, bars, a beach and even a post office. Creating a platform for communal living, more than 700
international "Burners" are expected to travel from the US, UK, Europe,
South Africa, Japan and other countries to join the sandstorm of creativity.
For updates and information, visit the festival's facebook page.
TEL AVIV PREPARES FOR MORE THAN 180,000 PARTICIPANTS IN THIS YEAR'S GAY PRIDE PARADE
(Photo Credit: Nir Keidar)
As
the much-anticipated Tel Aviv Gay Pride event approaches, the city has
begun preparations for the waves of visitors expected to attend. From May 25 to June 9, 2016, more
than 180,000 participants, including 30,000 international tourists,
will attend events throughout the city. Tel Aviv's main event on June
3rd, The Pride Parade, is expecting hundreds of thousands of participants alone as festival-goers march along the Mediterranean coast before arriving at Charles Clore Park for a massive outdoor beach party. Conchita Wurst, winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, will serve as the guest of honor for the parade.
NEW EXHIBITION AT THE TOWER OF DAVID MUSEUM OFFERS A GLIMPSE OF JERUSALEM BEFORE 1950
The Tower of David Museum will present the works of photographers living and working in Jerusalem during the first half of the 20th century with its new exhibition, The Camera Man - Women and Men Photograph Jerusalem 1900-1950. From May 26 through December 12, the
exhibition will highlight the complex human and cultural heritage of
the city and, for the first time, offer a complete look through the
photographic eye of Christians, Jews and Muslims living in Jerusalem during this era.
For more information about the exhibit, click here.
URBAN ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL INVITES THE PUBLIC INSIDE
FREE ENTRANCE TO ALL OF ISRAEL'S BEACHES THIS SUMMER
Tourists and locals alike can benefit from free entrance to all Israeli beaches this summer. The vastly diverse Mediterranean, Dead and Red Seas are all included in this country-wide initiative to provide free access to the country's top bathing hot-spots. With Tel Aviv's designation as the #1 Best Beach Party Spot on the Planet by USA TODAY, the 13
beaches along the city's coastline alone will welcome more than eight
million beach-goers this year. In addition to the country's
see-and-be-seen beaches, Israel has received wide acclaim for its clean
shores. Throughout the country, 21 beaches and two marinas have been awarded the Blue Flag of environmental excellence by the Foundation for Environmental Education.
FIFTH JERUSALEM WRITERS FESTIVAL WELCOMES WORLD- RENOWNED AUTHORS
The fifth Jerusalem Writers Festival, taking place from May 25-28, 2016, will feature lectures, conversations and workshops with dozens of acclaimed writers from Israel and around the world. The four-day event will also offer musical performances, children's activities and tours. Top featured authors will include: Irish novelist Colum McCann; Iranian-French writer Lila Azam Zanganeh; award-winning mother-daughter team from India, Anita and Kiran Desai; celebrated Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez; and Mai Jia, a former Chinese intelligence officer and current bestselling author in China.
Roll on … the Dice Bar, on Queen Street, is one of the district’s cool drinking destinations
Temple Bar and Grafton Street get the tourist traffic but novelist Rob Doyle knows that Stoneybatter’s the cool neighbourhood to explore – if you want a taste of little Williamsburg by the Liffey
Until a few years ago, Dublin’s working-class neighbourhood of Stoneybatter and its environs, just north of the river Liffey, were run-down and little talked about. The O’Devaney Gardens high-rise flats – now eerily deserted amid fenced-off fields and wasteland – were particularly notorious. Following a surge of ambivalently received gentrification, Stoneybatter has become synonymous with Dublin hipsterism. Mountain beards and craft beers are de rigueur, and you needn’t look hard to find “hot yoga” venues, art spaces and community squats.
Alongside the greasy spoons and chippers, there are newer, more self-conscious cafes of the produce-our-own-newsletter variety. Through a double shot of sudden money and cultural ferment, the area has become something of a little Williamsburg by the Liffey. Dublin rents have become appallingly high of late: I felt lucky to move into a small but pleasant semi in Stoneybatter a year and a half ago at a relatively decent rate.
A 10-minute walk from the city centre, and served by the LUAS tram line, Stoneybatter still has plenty of the red-brick charm of old inner-city Dublin. It’s an interesting place to live during this vivid moment in the city’s history, as Ireland continues to cast off the shackles of old (in 2015 it became the first country to adopt LGBT marriage equality by popular vote). A newly sophisticated art and youth culture has also taken root in the area.
The lounge area at Generator hostel. Photograph: Nerissa Sparkman
This being Dublin, visitors to Stoneybatter will find no shortage of opportunities to slake their thirst. Older pubs such as the much-loved Cobblestone on Smithfield Square, where traditional musicians gather for regular sessions, and Walsh’s, which hosts an informal folk music night on Mondays, compete with pricier, IPA-savvy gastropubs such as Mulligan’s.
Facing each other across a quayside street are the fun and frisky Dice Bar, where I’ve spent many a tipsy Friday night, and the agreeably diveish Frank Ryan’s. The latter always seems to have a shaggy dog running around, and is named after the Spanish civil war hero also commemorated in the classic Pogues song The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn. The bar staff will also whip you up toasted ham and cheese sandwiches no matter the hour.
Stoneybatter is bordered on one side by the Phoenix Park, western Europe’s largest city park, with its towering Wellington monument and roaming herds of deer. It’s something of an open secret that magic mushrooms grow wild in the park. Foragers – or my friends and I at any rate – stoop to their task in the shadow of the Papal Cross, erected in 1979 to mark the pope’s first and only visit to Ireland.
It’s a lovely place to trip: as the sun goes down you can sit on a hillside bench overlooking Chapelizod, the river, and the southern suburbs that stretch toward the mountains, all of it lighting up in hallucinatory shimmer. To the other side of “the Batter” is Smithfield Square, the site of an inner-city regeneration project some years ago, and now verged by cafes, restaurants, a Generator hostel popular with backpackers, and the excellent Light House cinema, which screens an agreeable mixture of mainstream and independent films.
In the aftermath of the culturally barren Celtic Tiger years, Ireland is said to be undergoing something of a literary rebirth. It’s now harder than ever to swing a cat in Dublin without skulling a handful of writers and dole-queue poets. Debut novels and short story collections are launched with pummelling frequency. Stoneybatter has become a hub of this renaissance.
The offices of the Lilliput Press, where the curious are welcome to wander in and browse shelves stacked with the publisher’s titles, play host to readings and literary events (as with much of Stoneybatter’s cultural life, social media is the best way to find out about upcoming events). The suave, silver-fox proprietor, Antony Farrell, keeps the press running with the aid of an ever-rotating crew of young interns, giving the premises the vibe of an affable and bookish Bond villain’s lair.
A word to the hungry: Stoneybatter’s tastiest almond croissants are found in theGreen Door Bakery on Manor Street – but only if you get there early enough, which I have managed on no more than two occasions. A few doors down is a real gem, still largely unheralded: the pleasant and unpretentious Biscotti Caffe, which offers what is hands down Dublin’s most satisfying full Irish breakfast (available all day, too).
On the same street, Mi Thai is a decent spot for Asian cuisine (it’s next door to the superbly named – and stocked – off-licence, Drinkstore). Nearby, the Slice cafe and Wuff bistro are popular daytime food stops, while Love Supreme is the go-to place for Stoneybatter’s nouveau coffee aristocracy. The brightly fronted K Chidoon Chancery Street is a great stop-off for inexpensive Mexican food – served out of a food truck.
For accommodation, the Ashling (doubles from €119, room only) and Phoenix Park (doubles from €69 room-only) hotels are well-situated, with the park, river and city centre all close by. A plaque outside the Ashling indicates that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein lived and worked there for a couple of years in the 1940s: interesting to wonder whether he ever tried the magic mushrooms growing a stone’s thrown from his door.
Sites of cultural and historical interest in the area are plentiful. There is Collins Barracks, with its expansive courtyard, which houses the National Museum of Ireland’s Decorative Arts and History collection. Just behind the Barracks is Arbour Hill Cemetery, resting place of the leaders of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, which also has a wall commemorating John F Kennedy’s visit during his 1963 trip to Ireland. The cemetery and gardens are a nice place to enjoy a serene moment away from the bustle and the hipness. Back over on Smithfield Square, the Old Jameson whiskey distillery offers tastings and tours (from €14.40; I’ve never got round to trying it though), as does the hugely popular Guinness Storehouse across the river in the Liberties area (I have tried this: it’s fun).
Stoneybatter is not all working-class charm and gentrified allure. Over the past two years, opposition to government-imposed austerity following Ireland’s economic crisis has coalesced around the water charges being introduced by some of the people widely thought to have got us into this mess in the first place. Stoneybatter has been the most visible locus of the protest, with many residents blocking the installation of the water metres outside their homes, and determined not to pay up regardless.
If you aren’t put off by a high density of boutique moustaches and pedantic coffee connoisseurs, Stoneybatter is a worthwhile deviation from Temple Bar, Grafton Street and the other well-trodden tourist zones. As with all that is best about the city, it feels like a village, but with the perks of a (currently exhilarating) capital.
Rob Doyle’s short story collection, This is the Ritual, is out now (Bloomsbury Publishing, £16.99). To buy a copy for £12.99 including UK p&p visitbookshop.guardian.com or call 0330 333 6846
