La Stampa and Corriere della Sera are two of the most influential papers in Italy. They are controlled by the same Agnelli family that controls Ferrari. And they are coming to Charlottetown. Maybe.
The chichi cruise ship Silver Shadow is coming to Charlottetown as part of a late summer New York to Montreal cruise. The cheapest room on the 11 day cruise goes for about $13,000 CDN, or about $1200 a day (this includes North American airfare). This seems a somewhat expensive way to spend less than two weeks. It’s also a down payment on a very well-equipped house.
Apparently one of the perks of shipboard life on Silver Shadow is access to a wide variety of reading materials: during my weekly stop at Tweel’s to pick up The New Yorker the cashier showed me a fax from a cruise organizer containing a long list of newspapers they want to have available to their guests and that they want Tweel’s to procure. On the list were such papers as the Financial Times and Le Monde, as well as the aforementioned La Stampa and Corriere della Sera. They also wondered if “any Japanese papers” might be available.
The cashier’s reaction to this? Well, after wondering with me whether La Stampa was Mexican or Spanish (neither of us are well-travelled or all that literate, obviously), she remarked “well, we can get them, but it will take a month, not a week.”
So if you find yourself in mid-October at Tweel’s and see some exotic looking newspapers on the rack, now you’ll understand where they came from.
Comments
On the subject of cruising, and having enjoyed a number of cruises in my short time I find myself bringing up www.princesscruises.com on rainy/cold days. They have installed multiple web cams on all their ships which you can view online. When it’s cold outside it’s nice to see that a ship I travelled on is docked in Grand Cayman in 80 degree weather, makes me think forward to the next cruise. So this morning I am driving home in Halifax and to my surprise the Golden Princess is docked around the corner at Pier 21. We get lots of cruise ships, many of the same ones as Charlottetown, but it’s rare to see a ship this large outside of the Caribbean; the Golden Princess is the new sister ship (read identical) to the Grand Princess which was the largest cruise ship in the world when launched in 2001. It’s quite impressive to turn the corner and be 1000 feet from something that’s taller than the Statue of Liberty. After looking at the ship for a few minutes I ran back to my apartment and low and behold they had turned one of the ships webcams to face the city and my home, if it hadn’t been a partially foggy day it would have made for an even better picture but it was still quite cool none the less. Currently (1:15AM) the web cam shows the ship at sea on it’s way to St. John NB. Check out the cams by going to princesscruises.com and choosing Ships at the top and then Live Bridge Cams on the right. Fantastic marketing idea as it keeps you checking back and remembering your vacation.
On the subject of newspapers, why can we not, in this day and age, walk into any appropiately equiped newspaper stand around the world and simply print ourselves a copy of any newspaper we desire, on demand?