longhorn5

We were able to use our non-pin Citibank credit card for about 95% of our needs. We could not use it to pay at the pump at a gas station in Germany to refuel our rental car. We also could not use it to buy a ferry ticket in Stockholm or Tram tickets in Helsinki from the ticket vending machines. We had to wait about 10 mins in Stockholm for the ticket booth to open so we could buy tickets. In Helsinki we were pretty much out of luck and were left with a pretty long walk from Senate square to the Rock Church and back.

We just returned from a Baltic cruise on Celebrity Eclipse. Celebrity offered a shuttle for a fee - I believe it was $10 to $15. We did not use it. We scheduled a free/pay what you wish walking tour with Saku Tours. We felt it was well worth it and really enjoyed seeing places in old town that we may not have found on our own. The walk from the cruise port to old town is about 10 minutes.

We are on the July 1 Celebrity Eclipse Baltic sailing and are traveling with our three kids, ages 10-25, and my sister in law. My husband and I made the decision to not do the trek to Berlin, even though we have never been due to the things you mentioned...long time wasted in a train/bus and then a frantic tour of the city. We hope to get back to Germany at some point in the future on a land-based trip and spend a couple of days in Berlin. We are renting a mini-van and driving to the Schwerin castle. We will be there on a Tuesday so will be able to tour inside and outside and then plan to walk around the downtown a bit and try to have a German lunch before driving to Rostock and doing a walking tour of the main sites. We should also have time to do a bit of exploring in Warnemunde and hope to put our toes in the ocean.

I can come back to the boards and provide an update after our trip but, I won't be able to compare it to Berlin.

Your best bet would likely be the HoHo boats. They usually do extra traffic in the morning as shuttle boats between

Stadsgården (S167 quay) and Vasa. There is also the harbour ferry M/S Emelie from Stadsgården in the morning.

 

From Vasa to Old Town -> Djurgårdsfärjan.

 

The thing with The city hall is that you can only visit it by taking their tours

but tickets for those are of a limited amount and can only be purchased at the

city hall on the same day as you want to visit.

Thank you for the great info. I think we will stick with visiting the Vasa first thing and then head over to old town to see the changing of the guard and then explore on our own using the Rick Steve's walking tour. I read somewhere that you could buy one-way tickets on the HOHO boats but then someone else said they stopped selling the one way/one stop tickets. If we take the MS Emilie (most cost friendly) from Stadsgarden to the Vasa what is the best way to get to Old Town? What are the options for getting back to Stadsgarden from old town - it looks like there is a good bit of construction going on? It looks like there are city boats but, I am having a hard time figuring out if they will go from Vasa area to Old Town and Old Town to Stadsgarden. If the city boats are a viable option what type of tickets do I need and can they be purchased where the boat departs?

Yes they managed. Obviously i don’t know if some people were able to slip through, but as far as i know they checked tour tickets before they let you into the theater for priority departure.

It is definitely worth looking into private tours, we crossed paths with celebrity tour groups a few times in the two days we were there and there were at least 30 people in every group. Too many for my taste. Enjoy, SPB is an interesting place.

Thanks for the info on how things are working this year. We will be in SPB on the Eclipse in a few weeks and I am curious as to where those of us with private tours should line up if we want to be at the front of the line to disembark when they allow non-ship tours to get off.

The ship's excursions met in the theater as usual, and we were told that if we tried to join that line without a sticker, we'd be in trouble.

 

I just lined up in the atrium as I have for other ports. They kept telling us to "sit comfortably," but everyone ignored that announcement. :):)

Curious...what time did you line up? We are doing an Alla tour in July that starts at 8:30 as well.

Fabnforty, when did you send passport info? We booked this three months ago, final payment being made this week. We are a party of six and one person made the reservation. Can’t reach them so don’t know if they have submitted passport info yet or not.

When we booked our Tour with Alla Tours I had to enter all of our passport numbers and a few days later our tickets were available to print.

the answer may depend on where the ship docks there are several locations

you can check the quay that your ship is scheduled at

http://www.portsofstockholm.com/vessel-calls/

Handy tool - thanks!!

We will be at STADSGÅRDEN.

We are planning to do Stockholm on our own and visit the Vasa, walking tour of Old Town and time permitting City Hall. I need advice on transportation options. We are a group of 6 and will be there Monday, July 9th from 8am - 4pm and want to maximize our time. I’ve looked at the HOHO bus and boat and am concerned with how long it will take to get to our desired stops based on their routes. I would appreciate thoughts/comments from someone who has used them. Would public transportation be a better option? If so what routes and ticket types would be best?

Thanks,

Karen

Hi Dana -

I followed your Paul Gauguin review a few months ago when we were planning for our January 2018 PG cruise. French Polynesia does not disappoint - we had an AMAZING time and hope to return at some point. I asked you a bunch of questions about your camera and you were so sweet to answer them all. I ended up getting the camera and my husband surprised me with the Fish Eye lens because he knew how much I wanted it. I met another gal on our PG cruise who also bought the TG5 and Fish Eye lens after reading your review! Olympus really should pay you some sort of commission. :) I took so many amazing pictures and am so glad I got the camera and lens.

We will be on the Eclipse this July sailing the Baltic region out of Amsterdam. This will be our second big bucket list trip this year - someone needs to pinch me!! We were on the Equinox 5 years ago and loved that ship so we are excited to be sailing on her sister ship.

I am looking forward to following along on this review.

Karen

Most lines will start boarding at 11.a.m. depending their arrival time that morning.

Yes you can checkin and leave again, no problem.

However check with the Celebrity board again, since I remember Celebrity last year didnot allow us to our cabin before or around 1 pm.

However inside the cruiseterminal you will find lockers, so you can use that too. Small locker: E. 4,- for 24 hours. Large locker: E.- 6,- for 24 hours. Payable only with coins of E. 1,- or E. 2,- only.

 

 

mall locker €4 / 24hrs

W35 cm x H45 cm x D85 cm

Big locker €6 / 24hrs

W35 cm x H62 cm D85 cm

€ 1 and € 2 euro coins only

Thank you Ine. I had not thought about storage lockers but that might be the perfect solution.

Thank you LHT28! If we can check our big bags in with Celebrity and store our "carry on" items at the cruise terminal then we can go do a bit our touring before we actually get on.

We did a Paul Gaugain Cruise this January. We were worried about the weather too - leading up to the cruise the forecast showed rain every single day. We had a little bit of rain our first day and then again one evening. It didn’t bother us at all.

We are traveling in the Celebrity Eclipse out of Amsterdam on July 1st and am planning our pre-cruise sightseeing/exploration of Amsterdam. I have a few questions that I am hoping the awesome Cruise Critic community can answer.

1. How early we can board the ship?

2. Has anyone boarded and gotten back off to explore Amsterdam before sail away? Will Celebrity let us do this?

3. What time should we have access to our cabins? I’d like to drop off our carry on bags before getting off the ship to explore. I would leave our stuff at the hotel and board later but, we are staying in the Hilton at the airport and prefer not to have to travel back there to pick up luggage.

Thanks!

Karen

Karen,

 

Thank you very much for details on Bora-Bora and Moorea. How long was your ATV tour?

 

I have noticed that Teking offers 4 different tours. What tour did you take?

 

Thanks

We did the Long ATV tour that included Magic Mountain, which is incredible! The tour was scheduled for 3.5 hours. We took the first tender at 8:30am and arrived back to the tender pier close to 1pm.

We did the all day Snorkel Safari Lagoon tour with Teking. We had beautiful weather and Really enjoyed our day.

We just got back two days ago and I already have withdrawals!

We just got back from the same itinerary on the Jan 6th sailing and like you prefer small group excursions. I can’t answer all of your questions but will provide info on Bora-Bora and Moorea.

We did the Pure Snorkeling tour and absolutely loved it although our captain felt it was too rough/windy to go find the sharks outside the reef. The coral gardens and aquarium do not disappoint and we enjoyed touring with a small group. After our morning snorkeling with Pure we returned to the ship for lunch and then took the tender back to town to shop for a bit. We shopped the morning of our second day and then went to the PG private Motu for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We thought about taking a tour on our second morning but felt we saw so much of the island from the sea during our half day with Pure and we wanted to go to the Motu.

Our first day on Moorea we booked a private ATV tour with Moorea Activity Center. We have never ridden ATVs before and I can say it was one of the highlights of our trip. Our group was really small - just 3 couples and our guide. The views were stunning and we saw so much of the interior of the island. We booked a catamaran sailing and snorkel excursion with Viola for our second day. We loved the small size (just 2 couples and the captain) and the boat. The highlight of this excursion was swimming with the sharks and stingrays. Our guide was very nice but pretty hands off compared to the guide with Moorea Miti Tours who held stingrays for his guests to touch. After our three snorkeling stops we sailed in the bay, which was very relaxing. We had lunch back on the boat then had a little time to shop for pearls and souvenirs. There were other things that sounded interesting to us - jet skis, whale watching (they told us September is best time to see whales), and dolphins. Next time (I hope there is a next time) we will either stay on Moorea for several days pre cruise or just do a land based trip there.

We also really enjoyed Teking’s tour in Aitutaki.

Hope this helps!

Lovely pictures! Can’t wait to see it soon!

I was really looking forward to seeing your pics and tips for the private Motu. We are leaving in a couple of days and this thread has been so valuable in our planning.. I know it takes time for you to post so please know that there are people out here that truly enjoy and look forward to your posts.

Once again I am amazed by your stunning pictures! I can’t wait to be in Bora Bora in a few weeks. We have booked a snorkel excursion with Pure Snorkeling four our first day and had planned to go to the PG beach on our second day. After reading this review, I am wondering if we should switch and go to Mattia Beach instead. I would love to hear a comparison of the two.

Thanks and hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

Karen

I just Love all the postcard looking pictures! We are less than a month away from our trip and we check in daily for updates as we make final preparations. We booked a snorkel tour and Motu lunch with Teking for our day in Aitutaki and I think we won’t be disappointed.

Thank you for the great info on Rarotonga. Based on the detail you provided we feel we can rent a car and explore on our own and see the most of the island.

Looking forward to your next posts!!!

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. We are about 6 weeks away from our first trip and are so excited. The picture with the church is stunning! Thanks for sharing. Can’t wait to read and see more.

Karen

Still following and still enjoying the beautiful pictures and info! ;)

I check in regularly and was so excited to see the next installment in the tour of Huahine. Stunning pictures!

Thanks so much for sharing! I can’t wait to experience the beauty of the islands in January.

I too was debating back and forth about if I should get the fisheye lens or not, and in the end, I am so happy that I bought it. Yes, there is a problem with air bubbles when you bring the fisheye lens into the water, but there's an easy fix to that. I just unscrewed the lens while holding the camera underwater so it filled the empty space between the camera body and the lens with water, and that eliminates the air bubbles :) It worked perfectly in French Polynesia where the water is super clean and clear... fingers crossed that it works equally as well on my Caribbean cruise in March haha Just remember to empty out the water when you leave the water.

 

I used the lens both above and below the water. In fact, my favorite way to use it was to take a photo with the lens half above and half below the water! This is one of my favorite photos from the whole trip...

 

 

 

The fisheye also made it much easier to take selfies. It shows a bigger frame so when I took a selfie of DH and myself, it showed more than just our heads lol Here's a good example...

 

 

 

I have a 16gb SD card and I only used about half of that (but I do delete the bad photos from the card as I go). I did bring a spare 16gb card on the trip, but I didn't need it so I'll probably just use it for my March cruise. I very rarely used this camera for videos, but those do take a lot of memory on the card so you might want a bigger card if you do take a lot of video.

 

I bought a combo pack on Amazon that incuded 2 spare batteries, a wall charger for the batteries, and a car charger, all for like $12. As it turned out, I think there was only one day when I burned thorugh my first battery and needed to change it out, but I liked having the spare batteries on hand just in case.

 

I think that answered everything :) I was very happy with the camera and while it is certainly pricey for a camera that I will probably only use on cruises, I think it was worth it. Let me know if you have any other questions!

I can see why the under water/Island picture is one of your favorites! Wow just wow!!!

Thank you for such detailed answers to my questions and the other poster’s questions. I’m convinced and crossing my fingers for a good Black Friday or cyber Monday deal ;p