Struth! Cruising to Mars – out of this world shopping at Harrods

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that not content with an-already 1.2 million items for sale in its 330 departments, London’s Harrod’s department store now has something totally new for its most-discerning inner-CBD customers – multi-million pound super-yachts.

The store’s built a special showroom with models of the yachts, plasma screen video footage to show what one- or three-million pounds will get you, and put in a team of yachting salesmen from top English brokers, Watkins Superyachts to help shoppers with their decisions.

Duck-in for a chat and you could walk away having put a deposit down on a GBP7M (AU$10.5M) ketch you could be sailing next weekend with family and a friends.

Or if you’ve the money, and the patience, order a 90-metre, 6-deck Mars super-luxury motor-cruiser that will cost you around GBP100m (AU$153m) – and take three years to build from scratch.

Then go and reward yourself with lunch and a drink in any of Harrod’s eight restaurants and cafés, and ponder how much its going to cost you to pay the recommended 29-crew from captain through to chefs, waiters, room stewards and deckhands to look after yourself and a up to fourteen sleep-aboard mates on that motor-cruiser… that you won’t be sailing until around summer 2014.