Get Your Skates On

Sat, 18 Nov 2017 11:45:00 +0000

Fewer things scream festive season than both young and old all wrapped up warm, holding hands, and ice skating around a picturesque venue altogether, so get your skates on and go check out our guide to the best pop-up rinks around the country.

Edinburgh – St Andrew Square
Starting in Scotland the oval ice rink at St Andrew Square, Edinburgh loops around the Melville Monument - hire a pair of skates and spin across the ice behind a gorgeous backdrop of the glittering city.

Newcastle – Centre For Life
Whether you are one of the thousands keen to have a winter whirl on the ice or just happy standing with a hot drink in hand watching people fall over, the Centre for Life’s annual ice rink is an eagerly-awaited annual treat.
When it comes to seasonal signposts, the Skating@Life open air rink has worked its way right up the festive charts in the city to be right up there with Fenwick’s window.

York – Designer Outlet, Fulford
The Ice Factor will boast its biggest rink ever this year – at an astounding 975sqm, it’s the biggest in the north of England. With its iconic 30ft high Christmas tree, the rink and its surroundings, set in Yorkshire’s Winter Wonderland, will once again be inspired by the magic of Christmas.

Cardiff – City Hall
The Welsh capital's Winter Wonderland is situated right outside the splendid Edwardian baroque City Hall and university buildings. Alongside the open-air ice rink, there will be a ferris wheel, a rinkside café and live music. Cardiff Castle and the town centre are a few minutes' away, where the best independent shops are to be found in the Victorian shopping arcades. The Winter Wonderland will also provide the backdrop for Calennig (meaning 'New Year's gift'), the city's traditional New Year's Eve celebrations.

Manchester – First Street, Deansgate Locks
In a new location this year the 70ft x 50ft ice rink can cope with up to 100 skaters at any one time and is open seven days a week.
Promoters say the First Street attraction will welcome visitors of all ages and abilities, with the trusty penguins on hand to help stabilise any wobbly skaters.
And for those considering an after-skate meal, there are plenty of food and drink options on First Street offering 10 per cent off for all ice skating ticket holders.

London – Natural History Museum
On Exhibition Road stands the Romanesque home of the Natural History Museum, and in its grounds is one of the prettiest skating rinks in London. It is surrounded by trees draped in 80,000 fairy lights, and there is a separate rink for younger children.

London – Somerset House
Glide in the tracks of Pippa Middleton, Julien Macdonald, Paloma Faith and many others, at one of the loveliest ice rinks in the country, set in the fountain court of neoclassical landmark Somerset House. With musical takeovers from Peckham-based radio station Balamii, an R&B night with Supa Dupa Fly and lots more guests, ice skating at Somerset house just got even better.

Brighton – Royal Pavilion
The ice rink outside the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is romantic, fun and always busy. Make sure that you book now to get the dates that you’d like, then enjoy skating underneath the pavilion with its illuminating light show. The bar is adjacent to the rink, providing mulled wine and cider, plus food all day long.

The End Of Year Review

Fri, 30 Dec 2016 15:55:00 +0000

What were the highlights and lowlights of 2016 for you? Take a look at what we thought were important landmarks in the calendar from month to month.

JANUARY

The year got off to a sad start with the deaths of many well known and prominent celebrities including the much loved entertainer Terry Wogan, the hugely talented actor Alan Rickman, and the ever popular music icon, turned actor, turned art collector David Bowie.
In fact the high profile deaths continued throughout the year, and by the end of the year people were questioning whether 2016 was in fact the worse year ever for ‘celebrity’ deaths.
From film and tv there was Frank Kelly, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett, Anton Yelchin, David Gest, Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne, Gene Wilder, Jean Alexander, Robert Vaughan, Andrew Sachs, Liz Smith, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Carrie Fisher. From music there was Prince, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen, Pete Burns, and recently Rick Parfitt, and George Michael, Literature wise there was Harper Lee, Richard Adams, and from sports we had Johan Cruyff, Dave Mirra, Chyna, Dalian Atkinson, Kimbo Slice, Arnold Palmer, and the Chapecoense football team. Although we know there are a lot more that could be added to this list.

FEBRUARY

Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Academy Award at the sixth time of asking. He also picked up a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe for his portrayal of Hugh Glass in the film The Revenant. The film itself actually received 12 Oscar nominations.
If you’d like a quiz question to ask people the other films he received a nomination for were What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, and The Wolf Of Wall Street (twice).
You can still see a trailer for The Revenant here.

MARCH

To celebrate their 20^th anniversary iconic British designer Jimmy Choo created a short but endearing video illustrating some of their finest red carpet moments.
To find out more and to watch the video please visit here.

APRIL

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90^th birthday – although as tradition dictates the celebrations weren’t until June. Already the longest-lived and longest reigning British monarch she also became the world’s oldest reigning monarch and head of state in October.

MAY

In what can only be described as a sporting fairytale Leicester City were crowned Premier League Champions. Relegation favorite’s before a ball was kicked, the bookmakers gave odds of 5000/1 for the Foxes to win the Title – a bet we all wished we had stuck a quid on.
Having just sacked their manager and appointed former Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri the Foxes started the season as relegation favourites, but got their season off to a great start with a free flowing 4-2 victory over Sunderland. They continued with their entertaining style, and the goals kept coming and points total kept rising. Striker Jamie Vardy who was playing for Fleetwood Town only 3 years earlier set a new Premier League record by scoring in 11 consecutive games, and a 3-2 victory at Everton in late December saw Leicester top the league on Christmas Day – exactly 1 year earlier they were rock bottom. Most people still thought it would be impossible they would keep up their momentum, but week in week out they remained top of the league. Chelsea, Tottenham, Man City, and Liverpool were all beaten, and on May 2^nd their nearest challengers Spurs failed to beat Chelsea and Leicester were crowned Premier League Champions! They ended up winning the league by a whopping 10 points, only lost 3 times all season, and the bookies learnt a valuable lesson.

JUNE

As Britain chose to ‘Brexit’, gritty British flick I, Daniel Blake set in Newcastle won the coveted Palme D’Or at the illustrious Cannes Film Festival in France and in turn made director Ken Loach a double winner joining an exclusive list. In all the film picked up 13 different accolades from 9 different award shows.
You can read more about it here.
We also lost ‘The Greatest’ as Muhammed Ali passed away at the age of 74 after decades of ill health. The 3-time Heavyweight World Champion was inspiring, controversial, and polarising figure both in and out of the ring.

JULY

Having lost in the final of the Australian and French Open’s Andy Murray made it third time lucky this year when he won Wimbledon en-route to later in the year becoming World Number 1. Having lost to Novak Djokovic at Melbourne Park and Roland Garos he beat Milos Raonic in straight sets to win his second Wimbledon Title. He also won gold at the Summer Olympics as well as 9 other Tour Titles, and the climax of the season the ATP World Tour Finals, again beating Djokovic in the final and thus cementing his place as World Number 1. Not surprisingly he was voted BBC Sports Personality Of The Year for a record third time. All in all not a bad year for the Scot.
Elsewhere in sport despite not winning a group game Portugal beat the host nation France to win Euro 2016. The less said about England’s performance the better.

AUGUST

Scotland took its biggest ever contingent of 48 competitors to the Rio Olympics in Brazil, and a whopping 18 of them came back with medals, across 8 different wide-ranging sports.
Team GB has never had it so good at the Olympics, and so many of the Scottish members of the squad headed home happy to have made sporting history.
Gold medallists, Callum Skinner, Katie Archibald, Heather Stanning and Andy Murray were perhaps the headline-grabbers, but across the Scottish competitors - there were many distinguished performers.

SEPTEMBER

We saw complete opposite ends of the spectrum in the mobile phone market. The iPhone 7 launched and broke pre-order records, meanwhile rival Samsung faced up to a multi-billion pound loss when they had to recall every Note 7 due to overheating issues.
Every launch of a new iPhone is a big deal and greatly anticipated, and this one was no different. Improved hardware, software, and cameras made it a big favourite although there were plenty of people unhappy with the removal of the headphone jack. Although this disapproval paled into insignificance compared to the disaster that was the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. First released in August the smartphone sold over 2.5 million units, however by the end of the month some customers were finding that faulty batteries were causing some phones to generate excessive heat, resulting in fires and explosions. This resulted in a mass recall and eventual discontinuation of the device, at a cost some analysts put of $17 billion. Ouch!

OCTOBER

It was announced that Lady Gaga was set to star in the role of the Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace in the third season of the hit TV series American Crime Story, which examines the murder of her legendary brother Gianni Versace in 1997.
You can read more about it here.

NOVEMBER

Businessman cum TV personality Donald J Trump was voted the 45^th President-elect of the United States of America, and everybody in the whole world had an opinion on it.
What started out as what some people thought was simply a publicity stunt ended up with the most unlikely of people being elected to the most powerful country in the world. After a bitterly fought and often ugly election campaign Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton although Clinton actually achieved more overall votes – only in America eh?
That said the deciding night shared similarities to that of the Brexit vote – that night after the polls closed a Remain win was predicted, but the public said Leave – this time a Clinton victory was heavily expected, but midway through the night there was a shift and suddenly ‘The Donald’ took over and never looked back. Did Trump win them over? Probably not – he was hugely controversial and often maligned, but in the end Hillary – who was not without controversy herself – was just less liked. The next 4 years are going to be very interesting.

DECEMBER

Having devoted the year bringing you collections from some of the finest luxury designers on the planet, the hotly anticipated Cruise sale started and it seemed everyone wanted to shop what turned out to be our biggest sale ever with many styles half price!
Be sure to check out The Sale right here.

The Solar Eclipse from the Cruise Office Window

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:50:00 +0000

With the Solar Eclipse all over the news and social media right now, we here at Cruise Life thought we show you how it looks from the Cruise office window.

This is the first Solar Eclipse since 1999.

Make the most of it though as the next partial eclipse visible in the UK will not occur until August 12 2026, and the next total eclipse not until September 2090.

Cruise Fashion Blog - Other

Get Your Skates On

The End Of Year Review

The Solar Eclipse from the Cruise Office Window