Iluvcruising2

We have found that if you are friendly with the bartenders and provide a cash tip for the free drinks, you will often be able to order nearly anything whether it is on the list or not. If you establish a good relationship with one bartender or a team at one of the bars, take care of them and they will remember you and take care of your beverage needs for the rest of your cruise. :D :)

You are right. I kinda found that out too. :):)

Yesterday, we were in Stockholm. Today, the ship was docked in Tallinn, Estonia. There were at least 2 other cruise ships in port. Our plan was to walk, and walk some more. We relied heavily on Rick Steves Northern European Ports guide for how to walk, as well as navigated with my smartphone GPS. In this part 1, I show you how we walk from the cruise port all the way to the Fat Margaret Tower, which houses the Estonian Maritime Museum. We didn't visit the museum today. The walk took about 15 minutes, max. It felt good to walk. The weather was gorgeous.

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Love the review, I so enjoyed the videos. We'll be sailing on her April '17.

Thanks for your kind words. What is your itinerary come April '17?

There will be 2 of us with luggage needing to go to the airport. We thought about ordering a taxi but need recommendations? Though we would wait until about 10.00am to reduce surcharge but we know there is an additional charge to the airport. We have a late flight and our airline will let us drop off luggage early. We could then spend some time in Singapore. What is transport like back into town?

Taxis in Singapore are relatively inexpensive, even with surcharges. With just the 2 of you and some luggage, you can easily take a taxi from Marina Bay Cruise Center to the Airport. Even during peak, it should cost you more than $25 SGD.

There will be plenty of taxis on disembarkation morning. See this video I made of Marina Bay cruise terminal, and where the taxi stands are.

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In terms of getting back to town, you can take the MRT, which is connected to the airport. But since you only have a day and are short of time, why not just take a taxi back to Singapore city, or visit a place of attraction. Much faster that way.

Alternatively, you can deposit your bags at the MBCC and then go back to MBCC later in the afternoon to retrieve the bags and go to the airport.

https://mbccs.com.sg/inside-mbccs/left-baggage

Mentioned earlier that we did not stay in the MDR for desserts as my kids wanted to head to the Windjammer to get their favourite waffle with ice-cream. When I got there, I discovered that tonight they had a live fruit skewer with white chocolate or dark chocolate station. This was awesome - the first time I have seen this on all my Royal Caribbean cruises. Had quite a few of these fruit sticks, though not all with chocolate. Then, I checked out the Scandinavian food section (this is the section of the Windjammer that they change the food every evening) and the selection was most interesting. For the live station, it was Pyttipanna. At that time I had no idea what it was, but tried it anyway. Now that I'm home and did some research, I know that Pyttipanna is Swedish for 'small pieces in pan'. A hodge podge type of dish, and often has a fried egg. Cool!

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And for my final video while the ship was will in Stockholm waters, we go outside to the helipad after all that food and drink to admire the scenery. The time was about 2000hrs local time and it was still so bright! Come out to enjoy the views. Awesome.

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The JS category worked very well for us because of the double points and that got us to Diamond very quickly.

But these days our sailings on Royal Caribbean have not been in suites.

So, it was time for dinner. Tonight was one of the few nights (or maybe the only night) that we had dinner in the Main Dining Room. Well, since we bought the $100 speciality dining package for 5 dinners, that wouldn't come as a surprise. Still, we enjoyed the MDR, though we didn't stay for dessert. The menu items were very familiar as we have had meals in MDR many times in the past. This video shows you snippets of what we ate. My shrimp with rice wasn't too bad.

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After dinner, I was chilling out the Centrum, listening to the live music for a bit. I was enjoying our 3-drink Diamond perk and got myself some whiskey on ice. Very nice.

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A video of the collection of kiddy and other stuff we got from the Turkish Airlines flight from Singapore to Europe and back. On one leg, the cabin crew gave a nice teddy bear to just one of my kid and not the other. Check it out!

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After the drink and food from the Diamond lounge, I headed outside to watch the ship sail away from Stockholm. We were the third ship to leave, at around the same time. The Celebrity Eclipse had departed earlier, she was docked just behind us. Behind the Eclipse, there was a cruise ferry, couldn't get its name. And then there was us. Busy. It would take about 5 hours to sail out of the fjords!

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Officially bottled water was not included but we had no problems getting bottled water using our 3-drinks per Diamond seapass card perk, during our recent Serenade of the Seas cruise. All during the cocktail hours of course.

Also, even though there is a list of drinks, if you ask the bartender very nicely, you could be pleasantly surprised what drinks you could get.

Oh, if you ask me what is the one outstanding or most interesting aspect of our May/June 2016 Serenade cruise, it would be our cabin.

Blew us away, given what we got for the price we paid.

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While walking around deck 5 outside, I take a closer look at this container ship opposite us. This was MS Heluan, a container ship, about 16,000GT. Plenty of container movement. This is not a dedicated cruise port.

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And docked right behind the Serenade, was another ship! This was the Celebrity Eclipse, the 3rd Solistice Class cruise ship belonging to Celebrity Cruises. She is bigger than the Serenade. (around 122,000GT versus 90,000GT for the Serenade). Look at the two crew doing some painting work from a small boat. A lot of effort is required to maintain such a large ship.

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This footage taken from the Diamond Lounge, Serenade of the Seas, evening cocktail hours. The weather was rather warm outside and the main pool was well utilized. I was in the lounge to get some food and a beer. Nice.

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We are HUGE fans of the Serenade, our favorite RCI ship by far. Of course everything is personal preference but if you like the smaller, more elegant ships and can do without a Flowrider than the Radiance class might be for you.

 

I have to also give a shout out to the best concierge in the entire RCI fleet, Mario Reyes on the Serenade. It's worth booking a suite just to hang out with him in he CL.

Yes, Mario Reyes is a good man. Another thumbs up for him. :):)

He was the Diamond Concierge when we were sailing on the Serenade.

Where do you intend to sail to and what choices do you have?

We wanted to do a short (7N) Baltic Cruise and Serenade of the Seas was the most suitable. We had a wonderful time, sailing out of Copenhagen, from late May to early June 2016.

I have put many videos of the ship and the ports (still ongoing). Do check them out if you want to see firsthand what the ship looks like.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2367291

Did we have a good time? Yes. Awesome!

Are we easy to please? I guess so. :):)

The bus ride was pretty quick, though it would have been too far to walk. After we got onboard, we put down our stuff in the cabin and headed to the Windjammer for lunch. Didn't take much of lunch, other than this footage of getting some stir-fry. Yummy!

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After lunch, it was time to walk around the ship and look at the port. Spotted this red Stockholm bus bringing cruise passengers back to port. Didn't research about them but it sure is convenient for the bus to bring you all the way back here. Also caught the Silja Symphony in the distance - she was a cruise-ferry and is almost 60,000GT. Not small.

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We made it to the Royal Palace and there was already a very large crowd at the best area to watch the change of guard. This looked to be a popular attraction and due to the crowds we could get into the parade square proper. Anyway, we stood outside and waited, since people were waiting. I guessed we could hope to see some type of march past of the guards. Am so glad we waited. The procession was very impressive. A military band on horseback! Awesome. Check out the video. After watching the parade go past, my kids were tired and wanted to go back to the ship. So we decided to do just that, even though it was still quite early. Plenty more to explore, but no matter, we'll leave that for another trip. We found the public bus and took it back to the ship.

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Thanks for all the info. We are travelling on the Serenade in 10 days on the same Baltic itinerary so this is perfect timing for us. Getting even more excited now!

Awesome. Thanks for watching. Sorry my output of videos is slowing down due to work schedule. Hope you have a great cruise! :):)

Thank you so much for posting this.

Quite some time ago you posted a review of your cruise on the Legend...just before we embarked on her.

In a few months we will be on the Serenade.

Since we seem to be following you, what is your next destination? I need to prepare!!

Thanks again!

Thanks for watching! What a coincidence. We don't have any cruise booked till late 2017 and that would be on a new MSC ship out of Genoa. Every tried MSC?

Great videos!

Thanks for watching! :):)

In this video, I show you snippets of the ferry ride from the Amusement Park stop (near Vasa museum) to Gamla Stan (Old Town) of Stockholm, Sweden. Earlier, we had visited Vasa Museum. It was a beautiful day to be riding on the ferry. We had to buy tickets from an automated machine. A kind local taught us how to do so. I used my credit card, which required a pin.

The ferry staff checked our tickets at the point of boarding. There was a group of English-speaking tourists who tried to board the ferry. When asked for their ticket, they claimed that somebody said it was free. They weren't too happy when the ferry staff did not allow them to board.

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We arrived at Gamla Stan and started to walk around, using my phone GPS. We explored the old town on foot. Nice place. Came to this delightful square and saw the Nobel Museum. We didn't plan on entering the museum today. Maybe one day if I win the Nobel Prize, I could come here for dinner, but until then....

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After visiting the Vasa museum, we walked towards the Amusement park, but not to enter the park but to find the ferry stop to take the ferry to the old town of Stockholm. Walk was very pleasant.

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I later found out that Stockholm, which is the capital of Sweden, was made up of 14 islands of the Stockholm archipelago on the Baltic sea. This place has a long history and plenty of water plus boats. The city's population was about 900,000. And our first place to visit was a museum built for just one ship, the Vasa museum! After we got off the ship, the plan was to take a taxi to the museum. We had a bit of difficulty finding a taxi (there weren't that many), though there was a bus stop and you could buy bus tickets from the machine. After waiting around 10-15 minutes, we finally managed to hail a taxi who said all 6 of us could squeeze in but he would charge a flat 300 Swedish Krona (or USD 35) for the taxi ride to Vasa Museum. We knew this fare was very high, but whatever. We had kids and didn't want to take two taxis, so be it. The taxi ride itself wasn't long, probably around 15 minutes. We got to the museum early (it only opened at 10am) so we decided to walk around and look for the ferry terminal to bring us to central Stockholm first, before heading back to join the line. And this was the line that greeted us closer to 10am! Yes, plenty of people waiting.

Frankly, I had little clue what we were visiting. So what is Vasa museum? Well, i it is literally a 'One Ship Museum'. Was the visit worth it? Well, yes, because I have seen anything like it. The museum displays the almost fully intact 17th Century ship that has ever been salvaged, the Vasa - sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The ship was only salvaged about 50 years ago, i.e. she was under water for more than 3 centuries.

The museum was specially built to house this 17th Century vessel. You couldn't enter the ship, but you could look at it from many angles and many floors. The entire place was a little dark (not sure why they liked this dark feel) and you can see from the videos that it was dark. Overall, I thought it was worth a visit, though I probably wouldn't go again.

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Finally, we get to Day 3 of the cruise, our first port. Apologies for the slow progress of the review. Been busy and also the videos take a bit of time to process. The Serenade was scheduled to arrive in Stockholm at 9am, giving us plenty of time to get a leisurely breakfast at the Windjammer. I was not previously aware that the sail in would be so beautiful. Look at the glorious sunshine! And there was a ship behind us, also sailing into Stockholm. She turned out to be the Celebrity Eclipse. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the Windjammer and it was warm enough to sit outside to enjoy the views and breeze.

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While watching them, we're getting excited for our cruise in August.

Hope you have a great cruise ahead! :):)

Soon, it was time to head to the gate. This video shows you some footage of the walk to Gate 228A where Turkish Airlines Flight TK 54 would depart. Now, when I googled Gate 228A, I couldn't find it! It looked as if there were no gates beyond 226 based on the map of the airport, at the Istanbul Airport website. But the screen clearly said 228A, so perhaps the website was not yet updated. That turned out to be true. We walked and past Gates 225, 226, and then that area of the airport looked new. It must be a new wing of the airport, so Istabul Airport was expanding. Business must be pretty good!

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When we go to the gate, there were many passengers waiting, however it was not yet time to board. Once boarded started, it was quite smooth and we got onboard the aircraft and settled into our seats. It was the Airbus A330, similar model we flew on a couple of weeks back on the Singapore to Istanbul leg, with a 2-4-2 configuration. This video shows you the interior of the aircraft and the meals service. The food was very similar to what we had on the earlier London to Istanbul leg, so I didn't eat much. Overall, it was a smooth flight and we landed at Singapore Changi safely. Thank God for safe travels and thanks for watching!

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