Queen Victoria has visit Malaga harbour.

What a day it was for Andalucia and Malaga when Cunard’s brand new ocean liner, Queen Victoria, sailed into the Port of Malaga on 26 December 2007 – with a full complement of passengers on board and her 1,007 staterooms and suites booked a year in advance – it was little more than a fortnight since her official naming ceremony in Southampton... and this was her very first Mediterranean landfall.

She is huge Queen Victoria.

Measuring 964,5ft length and weighing in at 90,000 tons, Malaga’s newest royal visitor gently eased her way into port at breakfast time on Boxing Day where she stayed until nightfall. With her distractive red, black and white Cunard livery, elegant lines, luxury accommodation and magnificent leisure facilities. Her arrival follows in the wake of sister ships Queen Mary II – which similarly put into Malaga on her inaugural voyage in 2004 and has called in several times since – and the QE2, which last year visited the city on a no fewer than five different occasions.

Malaga is popularly port for cruiser.

What Cunard refers to as port content is, naturally enough, fundamental to the planning of its cruise itineraries, and with optional side tours to Seville, Granada, Ronda, The Mezquita, Cordoba, Antequera, Puerto Banus and Marbella on offer, not to mention the vast array of cultural and leisure attractions within the city Malaga itself, with a massive new investment in the new Culture Malaga who now is bidding for the title of 2016 European Capital of Culture with all the new museums, (not only the Picasso Museum,) arts galleries, the new Malaga international Airport, (ready soon to take the new Airbus 380), the new Metro, new properties, it comes as no surprise that Malaga is a favourite destination for an impressive roll call of luxury lines from around the globe. Malaga is growing along the coast line to Benalmadena with properties of new urbanizations of new deployments with villas and apartments, and to the east with luxury’s villas on the hills along the coast line.

The most luxury cruise on the ocean.

Estimated to have cost a cool 300 million pound – of which her stunning art collection alone is worth more than 1 million pound – the Queen Victoria was built at the state-of-the-art Fincatieri Marghera shipyard near Venice and was handed over to her Cunard owners last November.

From the moment you set your foot in the dramatic three-tiered Grand Lobby, you are immediately transported back in time to a more gracious era with sumptuous interiors on a par with the “floating palaces” of the 1920s and 1930s, complemented by every XXI century luxury imaginable, and enhanced by the very last word in advanced technology.

With Cunard’s reputation as the most famous ocean lines in the world, Queen Victoria creature comforts are all you would expect and more. Conceived and designed to capture the heats of the most discerning of seasoned travellers, this is a ship that will surprise and delight her guests at every turn.

A Royal theatre, library, the Royal Arcade shopping area aboard.

Take, for example the 830-seat Royal Court Theatre, an ocean liner first with its 16 West End-style private boxes... the two-deck high Queen Room featuring prized etchings by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of their beloved dogs, and complete with its own 1,000 square-foot dance floor... the Royal Arcade shopping area inspired by London’s Royal and Burlington Arcades.. or the Winter Garden which, with its retractable glass roof, colonial-style ceiling fans and potted plants takes its inspiration from the conservatory at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

Other attractions evoking the atmosphere of the golden age of ocean travel include the two-storey, wood-panelled library complete with 6,000 books and two full-time librarians; the unique collection of memorabilia and artefacts in the Cunardia Museum, and The Courtyard – the charismatic, Tuscan inspired al fresco Grill.

Cunard is one of the oldest cruise companies.

While renowned for its transatlantic crossings and world cruises, Cunard is no stranger to the Mediterranean. As far back as 1875 – when a roundtrip voyage and whisky were sold on board at prices per pint of just three shillings (15p) and one shilling (5p), respectively – the company already had no fewer than 12 ships in service in the Mediterranean.

For Cunard, 2008 represents several major milestones. For the first time in its 168 year history (and prior to the QE2’s retirement to Dubai in November), guests have three different Cunarder Queens on which to travel, and in January, after a tandem transatlantic crossing by Queen Victoria and QE2, the trio also met up in New York for a landmark Royal Rendezvous.

Significantly, too, Cunard will for the very first time be offering departures from Spain, with two of the Queen Victoria Mediterranean cruises sailing from Barcelona, one in August and the other in October. Indeed, according to Cunard Spain’s Juan Rodero, the Spanish market is currently in fourth place only after the UK, Germany and France and is fast closing the gap.

Malaga is ready for all cruiser.

Malaga is already established as the second most important port of call for ocean liners on the Iberian Peninsula and more than 285,000 passengers disembarking in 2007 alone, Queen Victoria returns to the city in December when she will tie-up at the swish new Cruise Terminal opened just in February 2008, and designed to handle the turn-around of up to five lines and 6,000 passengers a day.

So all things considered, the Costa del Sol should soon be seeing a lot more of the Queen Victoria, as well of course as other illustrious members of the world’s cruise line elite.