Goodtime Cruizin

A bit more on SPB Tours. When I first contacted SPB it was via their website email. The person that I was corresponding with was Vika. It turns out that she was also the owner and she came out to meet us all at the port on our final day. We thought that was a nice touch. She and our guide, Svetlana have been friends for 17 years and Svetlana has worked at SPB for 15 of them. We were fortunate to have a very experienced & professional guide. Svetlana knew her stuff.

 

Today in Russia will be May Day or Victory Day. It is a National Holiday and as such many people were scurrying around prepping for the parade and various activities. By afternoon, many of the canal boats were left inoperable due to this preparation. So went on the canal boat ride early in the morning. Svetlana knew these things and Alex knew the back roads to navigate us through road closures. The importance of going in a small group vs a large bus tour comes into play again.

 

What a beautiful city & experience St.Petersburg was.

Did you tip in rubles or euros in St. Petersburg? I have read on cruise critic people saying both are acceptable.

 

We spent Rubles, Euros, & even US$ in STP. And to answer your question, we tipped in US$

So glad all are following along! We’re having the time of our lives. The Anniversary wishes are fun to see so Thank You! A shout out to Rick & Barbara for their kind word & their gift! Our room was decorated for the anniversary party & we had a wonderful party.

 

Let’s talk about SPB. First though, the weather has been crazy good. No precipitation, Sunny, high in low to mid 60s, w/ a light wind. We chose the deluxe tour from SPB tours. Which included the following;

Hermitage Museum

Church of our Savior on the Spllied Blood

St. Isaacs Cathedral

Peter & Paul Forretress & Cathedral

Peterhof Fountain Park & Gardens

Catherine’s Palace w Amber Room

Yusupov Palace

Two great lunches were served on both days that were inclusive.

I requested a small group w a max of 8 & ended up w 10. I’m telling you now whether you start the group or join a group, go ‘small’ group. This is important. If someone on your roll call is asking for others to join in, do it! Our group paid $285 ea for a small group w/ a personal driver & guide in a very nice Mercedes van.

 

I’m very satisfied w SPB although Alla was all around us as well. We were fortunate to have a wonderful group of 10 but also a very good guide in Svetlana. And our driver Alex the Great was spot on and knew when & where to go. Vans can get around where buses can’t! Plus the loading & unloading of a bus will waste valuable time. Think small group and go for a!

 

The places we went were amazing. Add to this a nice little stop by request to a local food market ( grocery store), our tour company, guide, and driver were very good.

 

This is a long and extensive two days. But doable. We saw a lot in two days. Looking back, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

 

Vodka= Cheers. If you have questions, ask away.

 

Tomorrow we do Helsinki & Porvoo via Viator.

Goodtime are you still there?... Been following along because we are in GS 1600 on the 28th. Really enjoying you port tips.

 

Yes...i’m Here! We lost connection as soon as we ported in St. Pete. We just completed our 2nd day in this beautiful city. We have internet again & the ship is sailing away as I type this. We’ve enjoyed 1600 and the corner aft balcony. I’m sure your weather will be much warmer.

 

Amit will be your Concierge & Bernidene your bartender in the CL. Both are absolutely wonderful. Amit escorted my party of 10 off the ship both days in StPete. We were one of the first through customs because of his help.

 

We really really enjoyed STP & I promise to post some good details , but for now I have a date w/ Bernie & Uncle Jack. I need to relax a tad. I’ll post very soon again. Cheers!

Thanks for following along and the nice Anniversary wishes. We’re only age 60 & 59. We married young and I was accused of marrying up! LOL but we feel old tonight when we couldn’t keep up w the 80’s party,l. We did dance! Though!

 

Tomorrow is Sr.Petersburg via SPB tours. I’ll keep you posted!

A bit of info on Tallin for you future planners. Tallin is a wonderful stop & is a beautiful is city along the coast. There are quite a few excursions available to satisfy the many. We chose the Hop On / Hop Off. Which btw there are two different operators. The one we used was called, City Sight Seeing Tallinn through Viator. And finally, one can purchase a bus ticket at the pier $10 US / $8 Euros pp RT cash only that will carry you directly from the cruise port to a drop off point that is a 10 min walk to Lower Old Town.

If you decide to go HoHo, it picks you up outside the gate, about a 5 min walk from gangway. It has three different lines,

Blue 60 min, Green 75 mins, & finally Red 60 min. Altogether offering 18 stops total. The Historic Center & Old Town is on jthe Red Line which is where we eventually went but we did jump on the Green by mistake but it was no biggee as it brought us back to a shared stop w Red. Anyway, it was really nice w great buildings etc. we enjoyed a nice lunch w/ a patio too. Old town seemed to be the most favorite stop as the tour buses were everywhere! good times!

 

Tonight for dinner, we check out Chops as we celebrate #40 w/ friends & reservations at 6:30pm!

I´m sorry you didn´t know about this cabin beforehand.

 

I fully agree with your sentiments. IMO 1600 on the Radiance class is the worst GS.

 

Live & learn! And while true, it’s still a GS and has been thoroughly enjoyable. And besides that, we got the GS at JS pricing. ;)

As we wait to leave the ship for Tallinn, a little bit about GS 1600. It is a corner aft starboard side. As such, it is configured differently than the rest of the GS cabins on Brilliance. And not necessarily to the advantage of the cruiser. For instance, it has a small hallway after you enter the cabin that really eats up valuable living space. As a result the cabin has NO walk-in closet. It appears to be the size of a balcony cabin closet. The bed is on an angle & the balcony is half the size of the JS balcony next door. These things were not known to us at the time of booking. One has to walk to the aft of the ship to enter the cabin which is a pretty long walk. This we understood. What we didn’t know is there are NO stairs accessible at the aft of the ship. One has to walk all the way to the elevator bank to find a stairway. The balcony has two padded loungers, two padded chairs, and one small table. But the balcony is so small that it is difficult to maneuver through and around the furniture. So we took one of the loungers and leaned it upright along the front glass balcony wrap around wall.

 

This GS does give one Gold Card privileges. Having said this, so do all of the other GS cabins. Unless one just wishes to be on the aft of the ship in a GS, there are GS cabins that offer more space for the same money.

Yesterday was a sea day and it was very relaxing. We attended several functions along w some time spent in the Solarium. We were invited to a a VIP brunch for suite & gold card holders. This was nicely done and the food was pretty tasty. We then attended the second Meet & Mingle. This time the invites went out and there was close to 100 in attendance. And finally in the evening was the Top Tier Event which was very well attended!

I believe that reviewing food is so subjective so there won’t be much on food/meals but I will say that we have had very good table service. On the other hand the cabin service has been very weak. On two occasions already, we’ve had to call guest service to have the cabin made up & freshened. The housekeeping dept manager did pay us visit w an apology.

 

Today is 40th Anniversary and we’ve been blessed with a beautiful weather day for Tallinn, 64 , sunny w a 7 mph wind from the west. We’re headed to old town to find some fun!

We had a nice day in Aarhus! The weather was beautiful as it reached very near 60, plenty of sun and now wind to speak of. As mentioned earlier we planned our visit via the HoHo bus. But this time they had large buses (yes multiple units), open topped, double decker styled busses. There a total of eight stops included the cruise port stop. We stopped at the Marselisborg Palace which is stop #2. This is a man active residence of the Queen. So only the grounds are open and only then will members of the Royal family are not there. Our next stop which was stop #6 on the route was to Den Gamble By, which is an open air museum that covers roughly 1200 years of time. From houses to merchants, black smiths to the bakery, this was a fun stop. Cost was $45 US for the two us. We enjoyed a lunch there as well. We then proceeded to the last stop on the HoHo tour, stop #8 to the Cathedral. Construction began in 1200 & at 315’ tall, it is the tallest Church in Denmark and the 2nd tallest in Northern Europe. I felt the three stops in Aarhus we’re good, enjoyable and worth our time and money.

FYI.... we booked the Aarhus Hop On Hop Off bus w Viator. #1060871929 for $34.99 ea. The HoHo will pick us up at the Cruise Port & the first bus begins @ 9am. We’re not sure yet on how often the bus intervals are, but we decided to forgo the first bus and the potential crowds trying to get on. We meet our buddies on Deck 2 at 9:15am.

 

Before I leave the ship today to visit Aarhus, I visited w/ Amit the Concierge to confirm Chops for our Anniversary dinner on Sunday May 6th @ 6:30. We’re set.

To those that just recently joined us.... thanks for following along. I hope this live blog helps some of you as others have helped us.

 

After returning from Skagen early, we enjoyed a nice long nap! I think the world would be a nicer place if we all had afternoon naps and woke up with warm cookies & milk.

 

The wife went to the 70’s dance lessons, I went to the bar. She then joined me. Our friends were tired and didn’t want to do Late dinner but we did! We both enjoyed Tiger Prawn Shrimp. And our new table mates, were two couples from Australia. We enjoyed their company & conversation.

 

Tomorrow we port at Aarhus. (pronounced R-whos ) We are doing a Viator HoHo bus. Hopefully... since this is through Viator, it’ll be a much better product than what we experienced in Skagen.

 

We also had a medical evacuation tonight. Apparently there was a heart attack in the MDR and a Doctor (passenger) resuscitated the fellow and saved his life!

 

See you in Aarhus!

Bob, we were all having a bit of fun regarding Gilligan’s Island the next song of a “three hour tour”. Actually the weather has been great while at sea. But before we boarded and after we ported, it has rained often.

 

Ok, I’ve learned a bit more regarding Skagen. Pretty much the only tour or excursions one can get are through Royal. I surely can’t tell anyone what to do but I can tell you what we did do and what we’d do differently. I would not buy any tickets for the HoHo bus in Skagen. There’s only one bus operating today and it was a hotel shuttle style bus. With the bad weather, nobody Hopped Off. Meaning.... you can’t hop off a bus if you never hopped on! The town is prettt much touristy but does have some decent seat & drink establishments.

 

If your attempting to get to the ‘point’ your choices are limited to the following... Royals excursion, HoHo bus, Taci or walk the 3 miles. If I had to do it all over again, and wanted to go to the point, I’d do the Royal Excursion.

Thanks for your posts, we are on Navigator on 3 June for a Baltic cruise so watching closely with interest.

Interested whether you have ship or private tours in St Petersburg and particularly interested in whether there are any delays in getting off the ship for those on the private tours.

Thanks for following! We have two excursions booked through SPB tours. StPtete & Berlin. We do not believe there will be delays as the ship will be docked. So there should not be any preference (Royal excursions) off first.

We didn’t plan much in Skagen. Pronounced Skane. The plan was to go to the furthest ‘point’ of land . So when you get off the ship, you either walk 15 to 20 mins to the town center or buy a $7us per person to get there. We should have walked it wasn’t as far as we were lead to believe. Then you can either walk the town or buy a Hop On Hop Off bus ticket, $8us each. We did the HoHo as well. The first bus drove us a mile. We then walk to bus stop and this is where things went awry. There was NOT enough buses to handle the masses and the busses they have were small shuttle style buses. It was a complete but. No pun intended. So we decided to punt. Find a coffee house to get out of the rain. An Irish Coffee and a Walnut pastry did the trick.

$30 for bus tickets were a total waste. The town of Skagen is not set up to transport masses amounts of people leaving a ship at the same time.

 

Pretty town. Friendly folks but just a poor set up for HoHo.

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Test. I guess posting pics isn’t going to happen. I’m struggling. Does anyone have a link w instructions? I have plenty pics but need a bit of help to get them posted,

Meet & Mingle was attended by a sparse crowd as once again notices were NOT delivered to any of the rooms. Because of this my odds of winners by something like ncreased. And so .... I won the relatively expensive bottle of Champagne. The key word there is ‘relatively ‘. We were told that a re-do will occur on day 5.

 

 

Not all state rooms received the nice upgrades. But 1600 did. New carpet, bed, sofa, chair, and furniture. Today we have no rain. It’s beautiful out but chili. I type this on the balcony. There is more work to be done as we were told the carpet cam in two days late. I know the balcony railing was sanded but not re-varnished yet. Not complaining though. We walked much the ship today. It’s in great shape. They also have a complete new set of dancers & singers on board. That will make their debut tonight.

Tonight is formal night already. We’ll pass on this one and catch the 2nd formal evening. Tonight we do Giovanni’s @ 6:30. It will be our first of four dinners purchased online the Specialty Restaurant plan.

 

In a few mins we go to the Meet & Mingle. We were not given a notice in our cabin but the Concierge confirmed it at 10am in the Colony Club. Just over 100 has registered.

 

The sea is a beautiful blue green.

Today is a Sea day which means we can sleep in and I can have a Bloody Mary No plans, no excursions etc. Just R & R. I’ll be back later!

At 5 we head to the CL. It’s busy. Have couple of drinks then we head across the hall to Viking Crown which is now called the Starquest. Anyway we meet some more roll call members. We have late seating (8:30pm) for dinner at a large table. We find our buddies and head to the MDR. Service and crowds seem so confusing on the first night buthings finally fell into place. Enjoyable dinner. Although our other table mates have already abandoned us. LOL. They asked us if we spoke Brazilian. I must admit I did attempt to learn a few key words in Dutch & German but I didn’t even think about Brazilian! Anyway we couldn’t communicate at all so they politely requested a new spot going forward which is exactly what you should do.

We boarded yesterday w ease. Our first GS allowed us to skip a pretty good sized line and boom we’re on the ship! The first thing we noticed was the smell of new carpeting! Our suite is nice. A corner aft cabin #1600. It’s comfortable and also has new carpet and furniture. Luggage arrived shortly afterwards. We’re good! Lunch at the WJ & was crowded us usual on day one but always good.

It’s very difficult to post as the internet comes and goes on Royal’s Voom & surf plan. But thanks everyone for following. We’re on the ship and all is well! I’ll try posting a bit later

The rain continues. We have 45 mins to reach the Anne Frank house and it’s windy, cold, & raining. So we taxi for $18 euros. The Anne Frank house was nicely organized. At 9:30 right on schedule they let us in. We were completed with the tour by 10:45. This one included pit stops & gift shop. A nice way to end our stay in Ansterdam.

 

Due to dry docking, they’ve pushed sail away one hour back. Now at 6pm . We have time to chill a bit, grab our bags & a beer.

 

Next stop Brilliance of the Seas!