Warnemunde/Berlin Carnival Excursion ?

[adam7392]

Looking at 2021 cruise to Baltic on Legend.  Ship docks in Warnemunde from 6:30am - 11pm giving enough time to get to Berlin and back.  Does anyone know if the ship arranges excursions to Berlin?  Was going to go with Princess this summer now cancelled and they had a train excursion dropping you off in Berlin for 5 hours by yourself which is what I would be looking for from Carnival.   Aware there are third party tours e.g. Alla but given the distances would prefer knowing the ship isn't leaving without me.

 

[cruisequeen4ever]

We did the Princess train one and highly recommend it. I’d assume Carnival will offer the same one as other cruise lines seem to offer it, too. I definitely recommend going with a cruise line excursion due to the long random time. Our train was delayed about an hour, and we would have missed the ship if it wasn’t for it being a Princess excursion. 

[nunuc2000]

I 100% agree with cruisequeen4ever... go with the ship's excursion for that port! We did the Baltics with another line a couple years ago, and we were considering doing the "Berlin on our own", either with the ship providing the transportation, or us finding our own. Then others advised that we do a fully guided day through the cruiseline, and we're so glad we did!

 

Our incredibly busy day stated with a 3 hour AC coach ride on the autobahn to Schachenhausen concentration camp (Might be off on the spelling), and then to Berlin proper where we toured everything from the Brandenburg gate, the wall, the Holocaust memorial, and several other stops, along with a fantastic authentic German lunch at a nice restaurant in a beautiful hotel.  The time spent at the concentration camp was powerfully moving... such an incredibly well done tour! The rest of our stops were equally amazing!!  We picked up our guide in a small town that is just outside of the camp, and dropped her off again on the way back to the ship - she was truly amazing and knowledgeable and sensitive - her father was a worker at the camp, so her reasons for becoming a guide were quite personal - she did it justice! 

 

That day, that started at 7 am and went until about 8pm, along with our two day tour in St Petersburg (Through Alla), were the longest port days, but the most rewarding and enjoyable.  There were several others that we had met in our cruise critic group that chose to do Berlin on their own, and they were quite disappointed with their experience - it was confusing and challenging to  get to each of the the sights they wanted to see (of which we saw even more than they did), and they ended up eating street food on the run, and almost missing the bus back from Berlin to the port area. They also did not get to a concentration camp, which for us anyway, was the highlight of that day.

 

But I'm sure there are others who would maintain that it is totally doable on your own... I wouldn't attempt it.  Even having been there before, if we ever get there again, we would once again choose to do the ship's excursion. 🙂