Ships / Boats

Aristotle Onassis’ Mega Yacht

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Aristotle Onassis was well known as a flamboyant Greek shipping tycoon and being a shipping tycoon means you need a fairly good personal yacht. His yacht known as the Christina was a converted 1943 built navy frigate that he purchased for $34000, as it had become surplus after WW2. After spending $4 million on it, the boat has been visited by celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Eva Peron, John F Kennedy and Winston Churchill and was lavishly appointed with his bar even containing whale teeth footrests and whale foreskin leather seats. After his death the Yacht was given to the Greek government for use as a presidential yacht but later fell into a state of disrepair. Today the yacht has been refurbished as a luxury charter now known as the Christina O. So if you want to sit by the mosaic floor pool that rises at the push of a button to form a dance floor, start saving up as 1 day on the boat can set you back more than what some people earn in a year.

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Deutsches Technikmuseum – Berlin

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The Deutsches Technikmuseum or Museum of Technology a enjoyable and educational journey with some amazing examples of German technology on show. Built in the former goods yard of Anhalter Guterbahnholf a railway yard the museum has huge pavilions of planes, trains, cars, boats a planetarium and even a brewery. The museum also features some interesting production areas where you can see actual craftsman make suitcases, rolled jewelry and printing. The museum is set over four sites all within a few minutes walk and only about 10 minutes walk from Potsdamer Plaz. The vintage car depot is a must for any car buffs, here you will see a collection of over 100 historic German cars, some very rare while others familiar. The railway yard has dozens of beautiful examples of railway stock all magnificently restored to their former glory while the aviation and space flight atrium has some very interesting military and civilian aircraft.

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MOTAT Museum of Transport & Technology

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MOTAT is the largest transport and technology museum in New Zealand with over 40 acres of exhibitions. Opening in 1964 the centre is built on a site where a pump station pumped water from Western Springs to the centre of Auckland. The centre has hours of educational entertainment for all ages, there’s an activities centre with over 20 displays including a huge Hand’s on Science Centre. There are all forms of road transportation, trams, railway stock, aviation, military, busses you name it- if it moves they have it. Some of the more notable items in their collection include the only Solent Mark IV Flying Boat in the world and one of only a handful of WW2 Avro Lancaster Bombers in the world, the first chilled beer tanker in the World and Billy T James’ 1954 Chevrolet. MOTAT also has one of the largest fire engine collections in the world. A very impressive collection indeed.

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The Queen Mary

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The Queen Mary is one of the few pre world war 2 ocean liners to survive to this day. Originally used as an ocean liner from 1936 to 1967 the RMS Queen Mary was at one point the fastest way to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean liner business was huge in those days but after the war when long distant faster aircraft developed numbers on the pre war ship dwindled and she was finally retired in  1967. Fortunately she was saved from the scrap heap like many grand ships before her. The city of Long Beach in California wanted to set up a maritime museum and what better building to do it in than a ship with such a grand history. Today much of the ship has been converted into museum, hotel or function facilities. The attraction has had a chequered past of financial success but its future looks bright with a new company recently taking over the lease with plans to refurbish. One interesting thing to note is that the new Queen Mary 2 has been fitted with one of her original horns.

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