To the Baltic Sea: Reviewing the Star's May 24th Voyage

[BrianC-80]

We just arrived back home from the Star yesterday. Had a generally very positive experience on our second NCL cruise - the last one was on the Jade in December 2014 to the Eastern Med. This time around it was our bucket list cruise to the Baltic Sea - it was the normal NCL set up, sailing out of Copenhagen to Warnemunde, Talinn, St. Petersburg (overnight), Helsinki and Stockholm.

 

We'd booked back when the rolling special offers first started, so we had both the ultimate beverage package and the unlimited dining package. So I'm afraid we didn't take photos of the main dining room menus as we simply never ate there. Mind you, I feel my body is now readjusting to not eating steak at half my meals anymore!! :)

 

I'll add recaps of our experiences in the stay probably over a few different posts as otherwise I'll end up making the second half of the cruise really brief as I tire of writing. :) So first up is the pre-cruise stuff:

 

We flew from London Luton to Copenhagen airport on the Saturday ahead of the cruise (which departed on the following Tuesday). We flew Easyjet, and sped through the process at Luton having purchased the seats/priority boarding package and then the fast security line as well. Never been through an airport where we checked bags quite so fast. The fast security line was a little slower than expected, but was a lot faster than the alternative. Flight left on time and was perfectly fine.

 

Copenhagen airport was as wonderful as I remember (we had a brief layover here several years ago). We had booked an apartment in the south east area of Ostrobro a few blocks away from Nordhavn metro station. We changed at Norreport from the airport and then walked to the apartment from Nordhavn. Naturally I took us the wrong way on the way there and gave us the impression it was further from the station than it actually was. Of course once we found the right way, it wasn't that bad at all.

 

The apartment was nice, but you don't want to hear about that so I won't go into it. First night in Copenhagen we headed down to Tivoli, which we really enjoyed. Wish we had something like this in London! The entry was all included in the 72 hour Copenhagen card, in fact all of our activities for the Copenhagen part of our trip was. We'd added everything together before going away and worked out that the Copenhagen card was going to be good value for us based on the trips we had planned.

 

Sunday was the day of the Copenhagen marathon, so we'd planned to go out to Kronberg Castle and Fredensborg Castle for the day. In the end we managed to make it to Kronberg but not Fredensborg - it was simply a matter of missing the required train. So we went up to Helsingor for Kronberg in the morning. The castle was fine, but the general area and the approach was better than the interior. In hindsight I was very glad we saw it before any of the castles/palaces in central Copenhagen as they were all more impressive. The Copenhagen Card covered all the travel and the entrance to the castle.

 

In the afternoon we headed back to the city and went to Christiana. Pushers Alley was memorable! I think I got fairly stoned just walking around the place. The actual Christiana area felt safe and was alright, but outside the grounds the area of Copenhagen wasn't nearly as nice or charming. It was probably the only iffy area of the city we visited while there.

 

Monday was a very busy day as we sought to cram most of our sightseeing in - it was also our 7th wedding anniversary. So we headed to the Little Mermaid to start. I hadn't appreciated just how much of a pain it was to get there! We took a metro to Osterport and walked from there around the northern side of Kastellet. Minor highlight - they mow the grassy ramparts by typing rope to a lawnmower and then lowering it up and down several times. Seemed like an endless task to me, but interesting to see!

 

I hadn't accounted that in order to get around the northern side of Kastellet to the Little Mermaid, you have to walk through a random car park. It could be a lot easier to get there, but it seems like the city hasn't bothered to put on proper transport facilities to such a tourist hot spot and instead simply allows tour companies to scalp unwitting tourists with expensive bus rides from the city centre. After the mermaid, we walked down to the harbour bus stop towards the south and rode it to Nyhavn. From there we walked up to Amalianborg and went in with our card. It was interesting, and I certainly like the "glass bubbles" that let you walk through the perfectly set up rooms. Of all the various castles and palaces we saw on the cruise these were the most detailed.

 

However, Amalianborg did seem the most modern out of all of them. From there we headed on the bus up to Rosenberg Castle. Blown away - this was probably my favourite palace/castle we went to, including those in St. Petersburg. The crown jewels, along with the actual castle itself was great. So many little quirky things in it, such as the changing portrait. Loved it to bits.

 

We then headed down to the shopping area of the city for dinner, and afterwards we got some pie from the American Pie Company. Then we packed our stuff all up and got ready to head to the Oceankaj cruise terminal in the morning!

 

Time for the actual cruise:

 

Oceankaj wasn't far, and we simply used Uber to get there. It was the first time we'd used Uber internationally and it was simple. Once we got there, boarding was the easiest we've ever had it at a cruise terminal. Our big bag was taken by a porter and placed on a belt and we headed into the suite passenger queue (although the normal queue was non-existent as well - quite the change from the chaos we had boarding at Rome back in 2014!). Staff was lovely and we were introduced to the concierge and then our butler, Cipriano. I can't say enough good things about Cipirano, it was like night and day from the butler we had on the Jade. Every good thing I've ever heard about butlers on cruise critics was true with him.

 

Cipiriano took us onto the ship up to Cagney's for the embarkation lunch. This was the only time we had lunch in Cagney's as the rest of the time the lunch was served just across the hallway in Moderno (as was breakfast). This was a bit weird initially as Modern was where the Star Bar is located on the Jade. In fact it was all a bit strange as various parts of the Star were identical to the Jade but just a little bit off. Cipiriano took our hand luggage to our room (an aft penthouse) while we waited for the rooms to be opened up, which we waited out in Cagney's.

 

Part 2 coming soon!

[Loving My Life]

Can't wait to read the rest as we are in the very early stages of planning a Baltics cruise for May 2018!

[vetrano56]

We are going on the same cruise in Aug. Looking forward to part 2!

[BirdTravels]

Great Review. Thank you very much for sharing. Looking forward to future parts.

[Cruisercl]

Thank you so much for this; booked exactly one year away from your cruise, May 2017.

Any insight is greatly appreciated; will be following your review. :)

[BrianC-80]

Ok, time for part 2!

 

From Cagney's we headed down to our cabin, 10228. It was on the port side of the aft end of the ship on deck 10. I've love to tell you about our cabin steward, but I've no idea what his name was - he simply never introduced himself and would duck into cabins to avoid speaking to us on occasion. I did see him a handful of times throughout the cruise and would be polite but didn't seem like he wanted to engage.

 

I took a nap during the afternoon, and that evening we headed out for dinner at Teppanyaki. This was the only speciality dining we'd had previously on the Jade, which had twice the capacity of the one on the Star. It took a bit of guesswork to actually find the Teppanyaki, and it was only because we'd been to the one on the Jade that we worked out where it was - it's hidden around the back of Ginza (the Chinese restaurant), but didn't have any signage to say it was there. On the Jade there was a viewing window into the Teppanyaki, whereas on the Star the viewing window was into the Ginza kitchen.

 

The Teppanyaki was better on the Star - on the Jade, there were four hot plates and each chef worked solo. Whereas on the Star, there were only two hot plates - but the two chefs worked together. It was a really great performance by the two and I liked the interaction with the diners. A couple of highlights were when one of the chefs tossed a full bowl of rice into his hat, and another time when the other chef with flicking pieces of chicken into one of the diner's mouths. It was a good show, and the food itself was good. I had the Shogun, which was chicken and steak (really good steak), and my wife had steak and scallops (not a combo on the menu, but they were able to accommodate it - and both the steak and scallops were excellent). Dessert was so-so, the usual case for cruise ships. I remember the green tea cake wasn't good on the Jade, so went for the fruit option instead here.

 

We missed the opening night show, which featured the Spanish ballet troop. But this was only an intro to them, and they had a proper show later on in the cruise. We also found the same issue on the Star with our cabin as on the Jade in that we couldn't hear the announcements over the tannoy system unless one of us rushed to open the door to the cabin. So we didn't really get to know our cruise director that well until much later on, as we weren't hearing those initial announcements.

 

It also took us until half way through the cruise to realise that he was doing a TV show on one of the ship channels - frankly this is genius and based on this alone I rank Mark as my favourite cruise director so far. The show also showed off some of the personalities of other members of the crew - in particular Messiah, the food and drink director could easily have his own show. I dare say if they ever did a fly on the wall show on an NCL ship, then they'd have to transfer Messiah to it as he could certainly become a C-list celebrity out of it. :)

 

While I'm at it, I have to say that while the Jade crew would always do that typical cruise thing of saying hello whenever they passed a passenger, that simply didn't happen with the Star crew. Likewise, they weren't so keen on the "washy washy" stuff - while the "washy washy" duo were highlighted at the end of the end of cruise show, I can't ever recall them actually saying the words during the cruise to me - and whereas on the Jade there would always been one at the entrances to the buffet, I only ever saw one once on the Star there. No towel animal on the first night.

 

Day 2 was in Warnemunde. I think the majority of the passengers were heading to Berlin, but since we live in London we figured we'd spend a weekend there at some point. So we instead opted to go to Schwerin to visit the castle. The train for Schwerin was at 11:07 from Rostock, and we figured that we needed to catch the train from Warnemunde by about 10:40 to catch it. We had breakfast in Moderno before hand - I do love the three egg omlettes there. It's the same breakfast menu for suites as you'd normally get in Cagney's, but since they have the buffet table there for the Moderno salad bar in the evening they moved the breakfast over to there.

 

We left the ship and took the short walk up to the train station. We passed by Karl's Pier 7 on the way, but didn't go in. I just thought at the time that it was a standard tourist trap, but I didn't realise it was strawberry themed! Had an enjoyable time taking a look through the shop later on the way back. When we got to the train station, we found that the ticket office was closed due to a technical issue. The station staff were out huddled around one of the three ticket machines. As we queued up for the machines, the train left. We eventually got served by a staff member with a handheld device. When we asked for a Marienburg Lander ticket, the woman looked shocked. We repeated the request for a lander ticket, and it was only then that she seemed to get it. She spoke no English as far as I could tell, but the price on the machine (she didn't even know English numbers) matched what we expected.

 

The train pulled up, we boarded and the expected departure time came and... we just at there. At a seemingly random time about six minutes after we were due to depart, we headed off. As we pulled out of the station, someone pulled an emergency stop handle. That took another five minutes to clear. Needless to say, we missed our Schwerin train from Rostock by a good ten minutes, and those trains only go once every two hours.

 

Without enough time to make it into Rostock for any real purpose before the following train, we instead spent some time around the station. I think we got lucky, because there was plenty of things to keep us occupied. We got a postcard and posted it, bought some German coca cola (probably my favourite coke), did some nearby geocaching and then headed out to a bakery just outside the station. Really good pastries there! Since we were there over lunchtime, we grabbed something to eat.

 

We checked on Yelp and it seemed that the kebab stand (Donerbitz) outside served the best doner kebab in the city. It also seemed fitting as the first time I'd ever had a doner kebab was on a German exchange trip to northern Germany back in 1994. Donerbitz served up a huge portion in a seemingly impossible to eat open container - but I persevered and mastering the food hunch, I even managed to prevent any from going down my shirt. Nickie meanwhile went to the pizza stand and got some sort of hotdog in a cheese pizza thing which was also good. After all that, it was about time to catch the 1:07 train to Schwerin.

 

Train ride was fine, and they checked our tickets, which I was pleased about as it reassured us that we actually had the right ones. We got to Schwerin and after stopping to look through a Lutheran church we headed down to the castle. I've seen loads of photos of Schwerin castle and sadly it looks better in the photos, particularly from the air. We took some photos, sad on a nearby bench and decided to head back to the station. We actually spent more time at Rostock station than we did in Schwerin. We took the tram back up to the station and boarded the train back to Rostock just after 3pm, which ironically was the train I'd planned for us to catch if we'd made our original train.

 

That train again was fine, but when we got to Rostock the same thing happened with the Warnemunde train as we had with the first train. The departure time came and left, and once again the train just sat in the station for a seemingly random period of time before finally leaving. After getting back to Warnemunde, we walked along the canal front before popping into Karl's and heading back on-board.

 

That evening we ate at Cagney's. More steak - but good steak. I had the New York strip with garlic butter and chimichurri. Can't remember the sides off the top of my head, but I rarely get steak as good as I've had at Cagney's. To the extent that when we dined there three times (unlimited dining) I got the New York strip each and every time, although I eventually realised that mustard crusted with green peppercorn sauce was the best combination.

 

We again didn't catch the evening show - it was a one man singing show of some description. He didn't reoccur later in the cruise, so I've no idea if he was any good.

 

Part III to come.

[vetrano56]

Thank you for taking the time to write your review...now waiting for part 3...lol!!!

[PhillyTravelBug]

Enjoying this!!!! Doing the getaway this year for my partners 40th...but this is what I want to do for my 40th!!! Looking forward to reading more.

[bluesea777]

Copenhagen airport was as wonderful as I remember (we had a brief layover here several years ago). We had booked an apartment in the south east area of Ostrobro a few blocks away from Nordhavn metro station. We changed at Norreport from the airport and then walked to the apartment from Nordhavn. Naturally I took us the wrong way on the way there and gave us the impression it was further from the station than it actually was. Of course once we found the right way, it wasn't that bad at all.

 

The apartment was nice, but you don't want to hear about that so I won't go into it. First night in Copenhagen we headed down to Tivoli, which we really enjoyed. Wish we had something like this in London! The entry was all included in the 72 hour Copenhagen card, in fact all of our activities for the Copenhagen part of our trip was. We'd added everything together before going away and worked out that the Copenhagen card was going to be good value for us based on the trips we had planned.

 

Enjoying your review!

 

May I ask, where did you find the apartment?

 

We'll be in Copenhagen for 2 weeks next year Oct before the Getaway TA cruise and we're looking for a place to stay. I have family and friends there but if none of them offer us a place to stay, we need a place to stay - inexpensive!!

[BrianC-80]

Enjoying your review!

 

May I ask, where did you find the apartment?

 

We'll be in Copenhagen for 2 weeks next year Oct before the Getaway TA cruise and we're looking for a place to stay. I have family and friends there but if none of them offer us a place to stay, we need a place to stay - inexpensive!!

 

I forget which guidebook mentioned it, but we ended up booking through http://www.all-copenhagen-apartments.com/ We stayed at the Løgstørgade apartment, which was nice enough, although the bed was small and it was up four flight of stairs (which wasn't pleasant to lug the suitcases up after getting there from a flight).

 

We had considered staying at the Kong Arthur, which in hindsight would have been a much more central location for the city - it wouldn't have required a change of train/metro from the airport for example. But the apartment did mean that we could self cater to an extent as dining out in Denmark is really quite expensive.

[cml4958]

May I ask, where did you find the apartment?

 

We'll be in Copenhagen for 2 weeks next year Oct before the Getaway TA cruise and we're looking for a place to stay. I have family and friends there but if none of them offer us a place to stay, we need a place to stay - inexpensive!!

 

We stayed at the Adina when we were in Copenhagen. It's an apartment hotel and provides a washer and dryer in some of their rooms. Plus kitchen facilities as well. You might check them out. It's also close to the port and within walking distance to The Little Mermaid.

 

Carrie

Edited June 5, 2016 by cml4958

[BrianC-80]

Part 3 (Day 2 of the cruise):

 

So this was our first sea day! I'm a big fan of sea days, they give you a chance to relax, chill out and generally just appreciate the ship. Not sure if I'd feel the same on a transatlantic, but even then I've sailed across the Atlantic on a Royal Navy ship and I'm sure the activities on NCL are far better!! ;)

 

While I'm thinking about it, I have to extol the virtues of the differences in some of the bars on the Star. We drank at most of them, with I think the exception of the Sake Bar which is hidden in the Ginza complex. But that wasn't the most hidden bar, which I think has to be the Mojito Bar up tucked just inside the Moderno restaurant. The bar primarily serves Moderno and Cagneys but is a bar in it's own right - in fact, on the Jade the same space is actually the Star bar, so I'm used to having a bar there.

 

We quite liked the guy working at the Mojito bar, it was the same guy every time. Bit grumpy at first, but warmed up to us and became our favourite bartender. We were always ordering virgin mojitos, because we just found the cocktails on-board so strong!! Honestly, I had a single frozen Margarita from 5 O'clock Somewhere (my second favourite bar) and I was so tipsy that my fingers went all tingly, and I'm not a small guy by any means! I didn't see until later on in the trip that 5 O'Clock has tables and chairs out on the promenade - those are going to come into their own when the Star heads heads out to Asia. Although the weather was plenty warm on a couple of occasions this trip for them to be occupied.

 

I can't recall much of what we did on the sea day other than wander the ship. We found a couple of dead ends - the starboard side heading aft from the atrium, and if you walk around in the kid's pool area from the starboard side then it's a dead end before you come back to the port side. Also the lower deck accommodations were like a maze down there. We had the Cruise Critic meetup, who were a lovely group of people and it was all well organised with a fun game.

 

We went to the show that evening, which was said to be a full production show, but was really a non-stop medley of (occasionally random) songs by the ship's singers based in a fictional club. It was fine, it was about what I'd expect from a ship's production. The other production on the last day of the cruise was so much better - but I'll get to that one when I get to the final day. We ate at Le Bistro that evening

 

I'll do day four of the cruise while I'm at it, which was our day in Talinn. We'd always been told that Talinn was a town you could walk around, but we ended up paying for the hop on hop off bus service independently. That was quite good, as we got driven out of the city to see the song grounds and then back in again; we jumped out at the corner of Toompea and Falgi tee near to the Alexander Nevski Cathedral (the Russian style church in Talinn). We headed in there; witnessed an Orthodox Christian funeral which was very pretty, and then took a walk through the old town seeing the various sights and heading back to the ship.

 

Lots of wonderful things to see in Talinn, although some of them sound like dodgy nicknames. Fat Margaret, Tall Hermann, Old Thomas and of course the oddly named Kiek in de Kok (which even translated into English as Peep into the Kitchen, still sounds like an unusual name for a tower). We popped into a supermarket for a look around (one of the things we always try to do on any foreign trip), and just had a nice walk. I think that evening we went to Moderno, which was far better than the number of bookings would have led us to believe. In fact, we cancelled our second Teppenyaki night to go back to Moderno. They were very kind, we ate too much salad, couldn't eat much meat and ended up getting some roasted pineapple to take back to our cabin. That night was the height/ring act. We'd seen one on the Jade, so didn't go along; in fact we'd seen a two minute version of it on the previous night's performance and they both appeared again on the last night.

 

We'd eaten at O'Sheehans in the afternoon after we got back from Talinn - the hot dogs were really good; they used Nathan's famous. Excellent hot dogs, far better than we usually can get in the UK.

 

Next part: St Petersburg!

[BrianC-80]

Sorry about the delay in the next part. Real life! Boo! I'd much rather be on a cruise!

 

Anyway, part four at last:

 

So the next two days of the cruise was the big ticket trip. St. Petersburg. This was the reason why we were on this cruise in the first place. We'd booked in advance with SPB Tours for the Deluxe two day tour. When planning it, we'd gone back and forth about whether to book with SPB or Alla, and several long drawn out spreadsheets later I thought I'd give SPB a chance to confirm some things as we were about to book with Alla. Essentially, I wanted to know if the subway trip was going to be included.

 

They responded really quickly, and knocked $30 off a person. So we booked the two day tour at $255 per person. Jump ahead to the actual cruise and we knew we needed to get off earlier than usual and planned to use the suite priority disembarkation. We put in a breakfast request for the morning which arrived right on time with our butler. He didn't think we ordered enough, so he put some extra yoghurts in there. He was right - the peach yoghurt was nicer than the blueberry one!

 

So we headed to meet the concierge for the priority disembarkation at La Bistro. We were taken down the crew stairs at the side of the restaurant along with a group of about twenty people. As it turns out, we don't really have priority disembarkation. The NCL excursions get priority, then us, then everyone else. That being said, it all went fairly well (much better than day two!) and we got through the very stern passport control without much problem. I even got a stamp in my passport (this is a big thing for me as I don't get stamps from European countries and so mine is mostly empty, unlike my wife's American passport which is verging on needing more pages sewn in).

 

We were the first out for SPB, who weren't quite ready for us. But it didn't take long for other members of our party to arrive and I think we were one of the first vans underway. The van was good - 12 people in a 16 person capacity van. Mostly pairs, but a group of three and a lady on her own. It was a really good group of people, and we got chatting to some of them later in the cruise (if we'd know they were so nice we probably would have talked more in the van).

 

First stop was underwhelming, as it was to some Egyptian sphinxes for a view across to the old harbour. Then to the Peter and Paul's fortress for our first taste of an Orthodox Cathedral in Russia. Very impressive, and an incredible altar - we didn't realise at the time that they're normally enclosed and you can't see them. Then we stopped at a shop for a toilet break, which was also a good opportunity to guy a postcard/stamp and a magnet (I get magnets in all the ports, the fridge is covered with them). Then we headed out to the hydrofoil, which it seemed that most people (me included) fell asleep on as we travelled quickly to Peterhof. Peterhof was good, but involved a LOT of walking through the southern gardens.

 

There was a lot of bugs around in the air, which we decided were mayflies of some description. Our guide said it was very unusual. Some lovely fountains, which interestingly enough were all being fed with spring water. My favourite was the chessboard fountain, just because it was so unusual. Lots of interesting places to see, just be wary of standing near statues that people throw coins at (if you ever go, you'll see!).

 

From Peterhof we went for lunch at a nearby hotel, which I was glad about as I was getting hangry from the early wake-up to the fairly extensive walking. Oh, and I discovered quickly that my fit bit didn't register all my steps because the museum shuffle doesn't get picked up. I still hit about 17,000 steps on each of the St. Petersburg days even with quite a lot of steps not registering. The lunch here was good, borscht following by chicken with rice and a cream sauce, then some ice cream. Oh, and a shot of vodka. I think I was the only one of the table to drink mine! :)

 

Then we headed to Catherine's Palace. We had a bit of a queue to get into this one, and I'm sorry to say that I can't quite remember the interior that well (two days of extensive palaces sadly makes them all blur together a fair bit). I remember the amber room though, even if it is a modern reconstruction after it was stolen by the ****s.

 

On the way back to St Petersburg, we decided that we'd meet earlier the following day for the subway ride rather than try to fit it in that evening. I can't for the life of me remember if we had another stop on the first day, or if we went directly to the rather large shop. I know we stopped for photos of St Isaacs, so that might have been on day one as well. BTW, that was one massive store.

 

We were grumpy, tired and worn out after day one. We didn't know what time we were going to be back, so this was the one night we didn't use our UDP and instead opted to go to Ginza. It was really good! On the next cruise when we don't have the UDP, I'll be wanting to go to Ginza at least twice in the week.

 

But here's my top tip for the cruise - don't book an evening out in St Petersburg. Because the Star brought a Russian folk dance group onto the ship. Honestly, one of the best shows I've seen on the four cruises so far. Certainly the best guest performance, it was simply excellent. But this is probably a good time to bring up a massive failing on the Star. You see, on the Jade some of the best seats were along the side on the upper level of the theatre. On the Star however, quite a lot of those seats are simply awful. Several levels aren't raked, so you're literally looking into the back of the next row's head, and even when they are, because of these glass panels breaking up the rows you still can't see properly. Hopefully a designer will look at this theatre in the next refit and sort it out, because right now it's the worst laid out theatre I've seen.

 

So, day 2 in St. Petersburg. We learnt our lesson and ate a proper breakfast. This was really good, as you'll learn in a paragraph or two. We started off the morning with the subway ride! Yay! We got on at the Sportivnaya stop and got off a stop later at Admirateyskaya. Very stunning modern stations, lots of mosiacs. I really liked the Sportivnaya stop as the lights were all Olympic torches. I always like a unique Metro stop. Then we headed onto our canal tour.

 

Really interesting, but it was so cold that sitting out on the upper deck we were all wrapped up in blankets. Thank goodness they had those blankets. I wish we'd have this on our first day so we could have gotten a better feel for the city, but I really enjoyed it anyway.

 

Then, the Hermitage. Crazily huge building, big queue outside despite our early entrance - because we went on a Sunday and the Hermitage is closed on a Monday. So all the tour groups who did Saturday/Sunday were here, as were all the ones off the cruise ships here for Sunday/Monday. We got in after not a terrible wait (the line kept moving at least) and then started going through the numerous rooms. My favourite was the one with the Peacock clock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacock_Clock). It was a nice room to start with, but then you watch the video of the clock and it's just gobsmacking that it was built in the second half of the 18th century. I want one for the house!

 

They had a collection of Rubens in one room, which I wasn't all that struck on but I liked the van Dycks. Mentioning the Rubens reminds me of the discovery of the difference between the three major tour groups in St Petersburg. So you really have SPB, Alla and then TJ tours. SPB use small groups, all have audio headsets and seem fairly well organised. Alla also use small groups, and I saw groups both with and without audio headsets. TJ don't appear to use headsets and have MASSIVE groups. Whenever we saw a TJ group appear in the Hermitage we just had to get out of the way or else we would have got trampled.

 

That was followed by lunch at a place serving Caucasian food. We didn't get a menu, so I wasn't sure what anything was. We were first all served a salad of tomatoes and cucumber in a bowl. This was followed by a dill soup with a boiled egg in it, which I didn't have much of as it just didn't taste of much. Then a chicken kebab with rice which was somehow alright, but looked terrible. Then finally a pavlova. Nice to see the Caucasians adopting some New Zealand cuisine! ;)

 

I can't remember if we visited St Isaacs or Yusupov Palace next. I'll talk about St Isaacs first. This was interesting and just enormous. It was interesting to see both the site and hear about what it was used for during the Communist era. Yusupov charges more for taking photographs - it isn't worth it unless you like manikins. It was probably the least interesting thing about the trip, and you were herded through by the staff. We lent on a wall at one point and got told off by an old Russian woman.

 

But then came the reason for coming on the cruise in the first place. The Church of the Spilled Blood. Completely worth everything. The sun came out as we were arriving and it was blue skies all around. Amazing outside and inside. Reminded me very much of going to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. So many photos taken! It was just stunning.

 

Oh, I forgot! We had a hell of a time in passport control that morning. It was just nuts - the queue snaked all the way back across the gangway and onto the ship. Took us a good half hour to get through, so it was a good job we started early!

 

That evening we returned to Cagney's for the second out of three trips this cruise. I had the New York Strip again, but discovered that the Cagneys fries at lunch and dinner were different! I didn't know! The evening ones are the truffle fries, but tossed in Parmesan cheese to make them even better.

 

Next stop, Helsinki.

[BrianC-80]

Final part!

 

So with St Petersburg out of the way, we just had the Scandinavian duo of Helsinki and Stockholm left to go. While we had planned the heck out of quite a few stops, we had left Helsinki quite open with only a very general idea about what we were planning as we knew we'd be tired after the two days of heavy trekking around in Russia.

 

So with that in mind, we got up and got off the ship. Despite Rick Steve's saying that you had to buy the tickets at the information booth on the way out of the port for the bus, when we got there, we were told you could buy it on the bus. So wandering out of the port that made us doubt Rick Steve's, which specifically said to exit the port and turn left. But we couldn't see a bus stop there, but there was one to the right.

 

So we headed there. Totally confused because while it was a bus stop, there was no markings for timings etc. Bus goes by the other way - then, what probably saved our bacon, was that a person driving past stopped and told us that we were waiting at the wrong stop and the actual bus stop was further down... where the guide book had directed us. No idea what this thing was... possibly a bus stand.

 

Walked down to the bus stop and got on the bus behind several other cruisers. Second confusing part of the day, again prompted because we didn't believe Rick Steve's anymore, that the prices were different. The driver had pretty terrible English and we thought the singles were half the price that they were. So we had planned to buy one day passes, but if the singles were half the price then it didn't make sense to. They weren't half the price, they were exactly what we thought, and then we had a very confused bus driver who didn't understand what we were going on about. We managed to get the right tickets in the end.

 

From there, we headed up to the Rock Church for our first stop. We'd managed to get there before it opened and just as it opened... several bus loads of cruisers arrived. It was rammed, so I didn't form a great opinion of it. Unique yes, but just too many people for my liking. After a geocaching/McDonalds interlude we headed over to the Lutheran Cathedral. This was quite the alternative to the Orthodox churches we had seen in Russia. Much simpler decoration, which was almost relaxing on the eyes! We did manage to see one of the oddest things outside - someone sunbathing on the steps (like lying across the steps themselves).

 

Some more geocaching, via the Orthodox Church in Helsinki, and then went through the waterfront market. As Helsinki wasn't a long stop, that was it - after the market we headed back to the ship. We went and got some drinks from 5 O'Clock Somewhere while a Beatles name that tune quiz was going on. Finally got a frozen margarita, which promptly went straight to my head! Prompt some drunken singing along with the songs (hey, everyone was doing it!), especially Hey Jude. I think we went to Le Bistro that night, where we had the lamb. Seriously good lamb, btw.

 

For Stockholm, we planned to go to Skansen, which is this big open air museum where they collected lots of old buildings from around Sweden. It's on the same island as the Vasa and ABBA museums. After exiting the ship, we had the same thing as we did in Helsinki - queuing up to get bus tickets from an information booth. Except this time, you really have to get the tickets from the booth. Here in lies the problem, as there seemed to be several large groups ahead of us in the (actually very short) queue, that had absolutely no idea what they wanted to do in Stockholm. The person working there was visibly relieved when we walked up and just ordered the tickets we wanted.

 

A quick bus ride later, and a walk over a bridge landed us in Gamla Stan. We then jumped on ferry and headed over to Djergarden for Skansen. We managed to get off at the wrong stop on the way, so we got a brief view of an extra island while we waited for the next ferry. Skansen was a few minutes walk from the ferry terminal, and we stopped off at a little corner shop on the way.

 

Skansen itself was good. Because we'd managed to get such an early start on it all, we were there as it opened. So once inside we had to wait for the activities to start up. There was some really neat things, like the glass blowing workshop, but my favourite was the engineering workshop where everything was belt driven. I'd seen little examples of it before on television, but it never gets across the noise and craziness of it all. We had a walk around for a couple of hours and then headed back to Gamla Stan to have a walk through the area. But we were still tired after such a busy series of days, so we cut it short and headed back to the ship.

 

The final day onboard was a sea day. We got kinda involved in the activities; so we ended up entering a fun flag quiz (came second) and then later on a paper airplane toss. Ooh, I nearly forgot - elevator roulette as well. That was hilarious!! If you ever see it on an itinerary then you have to do it. There were so many competitors that we broke into two heats and a final. We came second in the first heat, qualifying for the final. Then we promptly came second in the final too. It was a day of seconds! A final night at Cagneys, having begun packing already (sob!). Had my "usual". :) Why can't all fries be Cagneys fries?

 

Our disembarkation was simple enough, we had paid using our onboard credit to be dropped off at Copenhagen's main train station. So we dropped our bags at the luggage hold and headed over the road to Anderson's for some more danishes. Good as always! We went for a wander afterwards, ending up by a palace we hadn't managed to get to on our first visit to the city. Then we went for more pie at the American Pie Company before slowly walking back to the station to catch the train to the airport.

 

It briefly looked like we were going to have some trouble with the flight back as it was for a very short time delayed by three hours. Then somehow like a miracle, that was cancelled and we ended up leaving on time.

 

All in all, it was a really great cruise. Mark was a brilliant cruise director once we spotted his TV show on the channels, and Messiah is such a character that I think he needs to be moved to the Epic in time for our next cruise! He's just brilliant. Our butler was simply fantastic, and the bartenders were really good - we mostly used the Mojito bar and 5 O'Clock. But watch those cocktails, they're proper strong!!

[Bella O]

Thanks for the review. We will be on the Baltic Sea cruise next year, and your review was very helpful.

[TheCruisingBrewers]

Cannot wait to read your review, but off to work first!

 

Thank you so much for posting!