Columns

The Great Recession has not caused a stoppage in cruise-ship construction, although building has slowed somewhat, and no new giant megaships are on the horizon.

I define a megaship as a “post-Panamax” vessel that cannot fit through the (for now) 110-foot-wide Panama Canal locks and carries more than 5,000 passengers. So the current world-record holder, Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas — at 225,282 tons and 1,187.1 feet in length, having a waterline beam of 154 feet and carrying an unbelievable 6,360 passengers — is likely to remain the largest...

by Julie Skurdenis

Most visitors to Dublin wouldn’t automatically link the city to the Vikings. And if they did, it would be the Vikings as marauders and destroyers rather than as anything good.

The Vikings, or Norsemen, first appeared in Ireland at the end of the eighth century AD. In Dublin, they first arrived in 837, reputedly aboard 60 long ships that sailed down the Liffey River. Repulsed, they returned four years later, this time as settlers, farmers, merchants and craftsmen, although some used Dublin as a base for raiding expeditions to other parts of Ireland.

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by Yvonne Michie Horn

I’d come to the city of Oaxaca, southern Mexico’s cultural treasure, for a two-week immersion in Spanish. During that time, I wandered around the Old City in my off-school hours, jumping at every opportunity to practice my emerging language skills. As I walked cobbled streets, I kept running into the name of Francisco Toledo, Oaxaca’s reigning contemporary artist.

“Toledo is a seed,” my teacher told me. “Toledo has insisted that our total culture be preserved, and now nearly every art form is flourishing here, creating an ambience, a sense of the entire...