ALASKA CRUISE

How does a cruise to Alaska sound? Cold, perhaps – if you were to go now. But it’s not too soon to be thinking about next spring or summer. Club ABC Tours has, and is offering a luxurious 11-day Glacier Discovery Cruise aboard Holland America’s M.S. Statendam on departure dates from May 19 through August 29. The package includes seven nights and all meals on the ship as well as a three-night express tour of the vast Denali National Park. That tour-within-a-tour features a ride on the McKinley Explorer dome car train. A half-day Anchorage city tour is also included in the package price, which begins at $1,999 a person. Membership in Club ABC Tours, $30 a year, is required to book.

For more information, call 888-868-7722 or visit www.clubabc.com.

RIVERS OF EUROPE

Titan HiTours, a British company, has launched a program of European river cruises in concert with American tour operator Uniworld. There are luxury itineraries along Portugal’s Douro River, the Moselle and Main, the Rhine and Danube and, in Russia, the “waterways of the Czars.” For more details visit www.titanhitours.co.uk. For an 11-day Three River Odyssey cruise along the Rhine, Main, and Danube from March 14-24, including airfare from London, visit www.noble-caledonia.co.uk.

TWO DEALS

For good deals on name brand cruise lines, check out the offerings on the Web site www.7blueseas.com. One trip now being offered is a 10-day European Embrace cruise aboard the Crystal Serenity. The luxury vessel sails from Southampton on May 5, calling at Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Bilbao, Honfleur, and Guernsey in the Channel Islands. There’s also a seven-day Hawaii cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines (three departures left this year) starting at just $599.

For more information on these and other cruises, call 7BlueSeas at 800-242-1781.

CENTRAL AMERICA

Here’s a very varied cruise that starts in San Francisco and ends in Caldera, Costa Rica, which Columbus discovered in 1502. Stops along the way include San Diego; the Mexican ports of La Paz, Loreto, Manzanillo (the “sailfish capital”), and Hautulco; and Puntarenas, Costa Rica, which is known for its spectacular volcanoes. The tour operator, Swan Hellenic, has formulated the itinerary aboard the Minerva II,a British ship built in 2001 that accommodates approximately 600 passengers. The dates are January 26-February 9. For more information on this specific itinerary, call 011-44-20-8466-7000.

For other itineraries on the Minerva II, visit www.sovereigncruise.co.uk.

CLICK ‘ N ‘ CRUISE

From the company that brought us easyJet, the European low-cost airline, comes the aquatic equivalent in the form ofeasy-Cruise.com. The company’s first vessel, easyCruiseOne, will cruise in the French and Italian Rivieras as well as the Caribbean, with Barbados as the departure point. Unlike traditional cruises, the ship stays in port in the afternoon and evening, sailing late at night for the next destination. Flexible one-week itineraries allow passengers to embark and depart at any port on the route as long as they stay on board at least two nights. Prices fluctuate, but cabin nights have dipped as low as $16 a person.

For more information, visit www.easycruise.com.