livelovelaugh12

Hi I will email them to everyone in the next day or so. Sorry for the delay. On a business trip and swamped

We just came off the last cruise and the port lect was excellent in my opinion. I have seen John but felt she was more accurate and detailed in her info. Plus she did not tell you to buy her DVD to see how to do the ports on your own she included the info in her talks. I think she is on the entire Baltic season. She also gave lots of printed info and made it very simple to follow. The lectures I saw on TV were not live and I did not find fault with any of them. I just wish she had more live talks. If you want her info sheets let me know where I can email them to.

In case I did not mention, Royal Princess was at the new terminal Ocaen Quay which is about 7 km from the city centre. This is where they will be berthing for the entire season.

I do have maps. It is about a 5 minute walk. Just waiting on my husband to show me how to scan and attach all the info sheets I have.

Once you see the map you will see how simple it is to walk to the end of that small road.

PS if you are embarking go late as when we embarked we had to wait until all the passengers from the cruise that was ending was off the ship. We got there early as in 9:45 and had priority boarding but got stuck waiting until after 1:30 in the afternoon. So eat before hand or take a snack as there is not much in the way of restaurants in the terminal (nice way of saying there is none). I think there is a couple of vending machines but did check. There is wi-fi but its slow and hard to connect to

There is also not much in the area of the new terminal well as far as berth 1 goes. There is a couple souvenir shop outside, a currency exchange that only accepts cash or does transfers but no ATM and a nice jewelery store.

If you want to kill some time and save money take the train and bus (assuming its not a weekend) to the ship. It is really easy from the airport.

If you need to get money, be warned the ship charges $4.50 for every transaction and the currency exchange machine charges the same amount plus the exchange rate is a joke. For Russia get rubles ahead of time as in before you get to the ship.

One other thing, if you do use the cruise ship shuttle to get back to the airport your luggage is dropped off at terminal 1 and most if not all people fly out of terminal 2 & 3. At the airport you will need to take a free shuttle to get to 2 and 3. Terminal 2 & 3 are connected. Just expect the airport to be super busy.

Let me know what else you need as we were lucky we had a lot of help from the American port lect. I am trying to scan and add the sheets she gave us but cannot figure out how to post them as an attachment. Can someone help please.

We just did that cruise - so here is what we experienced.

Princess does indeed try to scare people into taking the shuttle they provide or the city drive which are both not necessary and very expensive

We arrived at the port at 5 AM and there was Eurodam and another ship that came shortly there after. All 3 berths were full.

Yes there is traffic but if you plan properly it can be avoided.

We were very nervous after all we kept hearing on the cruise that there would be delays upon delays. What we did was we spoke with the port lecturer who gave us the number of the taxi company and we made other arrangements. We arranged with the taxi to pick us up at the UNICEF building which is at the top of the street. From there it was not a bad ride. Yes it could have been faster but traffic is to be expected anywhere. The total cost was 45 US$. No big deal and we arrived at the airport 45 minutes. We also took a cab to the ship when we embarked and it was a 30 minute drive. So it was not much different with the time.

On the other hand, we had friends who we travelled with that were on bus #3 (silver) and made it to the airport at 1:30 PM when they were supposed to leave the ship according to the shore excursions people at 9:30 AM.

Apparently someone made an announcement claiming that it was due to the traffic but it was just poor planning as we had many people on our flight to Iceland (enentual destination Colorado) that were on the other ships who left their ships at 10:30 and 11:00 AM and had no major traffic delays.

In other words, I would recommend that you take your chances on planning your own ride to the airport. One thing you will notice is that nothing shore excursions says about leaving and arriving even on tours is accurate. Ask the port girl to get you the taxi company's phone number and call them yourself (she is the only one that seems to answer questions anyways) and pre-arrange a meeting place usually by the UNICEF building or just off the small road that leads into the area of the 3 berths. It is a very short walk to both the bus stop and the UNICEF building parking lot. Before you get into the cab tell the driver how much you are willing to pay flat rate. If you have a late flight, wait until passengers are coming to embark and hop in a taxi then.

Also remember bus #26 does not run on weekends so taking the bus to the station is not possible. The train station is 2 km away. Let me know if you need the info sheet that we got from the port lect. It has all the directions, prices and best ways for every port.

Hope this helps