Baltic Cruise May 19, 2017 Review

[Hydrokitty]

Following, we are on Eclipse Baltic out of Southampton next month, so I'm anxious to read about your port visits

 

 

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We're on Eclipse Baltic August 13th with b2b to Norway. Enjoying this review. Posting pictures never works for me either!!

[luvtravel88]

Tuesday, May 23 Copenhagen

Today is was sunny with a high of 65.

We were up at 7:00, cleaned up and went up to breakfast. We left the ship at 8:45 and we walked the 1/4 mile down to the bus stop. We rode the city bus to Kronen Nyhavn, then walked several blocks to the meeting place for our walking tour with Fairy Tale Tours. The meeting place was a co-op coffee shop that was manned by students. It was actually right next door to Rundetaarn and we didn't realize this was a well known site until we got back home! We took a 3 hour walking tour with Burak that began at 10:00. He was from Turkey, grew up in Germany and was living in Copenhagen. He was very friendly and knowledgeable about the area and was able to answer our questions. He took us all around the downtown area of Copenhagen. We noticed that at one point we were very near the ship, yet we had taken a bus to get to our starting point. Burak asked us at the beginning of the tour, if there was anything we really wanted to see and we mentioned the Little Mermaid and Nyhavn, so we worked our way to both. We were given quite a bit of history of the city and shown a lot of the older areas. We walked through Rosenborg Gardens, but didn’t have time to go inside.

 

Rosenborg Castle and Gardens

 

Little Mermaid--she's surprisingly small!

 

Nyhavn

Gefion Fountain and St. Albans Chruch

 

The tour was over at 1:00 and we asked Burak to show us where to go to get Smorrebrod for lunch. He gave us directions to Torvehallerne Street Market that was glass enclosed. There were two separate buildings. One was mostly for drinks and gift items and the other was more for food. There were separate booths set up inside each and you could shop the aisles. We found a smorrebrod counter and got in line. We had plaice with potato salad, Danish meatball and a shrimp one.

 

In the other building, I had come across a gourmet chocolate booth and went back to buy some chocolates to take home.

We got back to the ship about 4:15, just in time for our 5:00 departure.

We had reservations for dinner at 6:45 and we sat with 8 people. Dinner was very slow and we didn’t get up until 9:20, making it too late to do anything else this evening. I complained to the maître’d about the service and he said to let the waiter know we wanted to have our courses served more closely together.

Two couples had signed up for our private tour tomorrow with Jeremy, The Berlin Expert. They had heard some talk that there was a large celebration occurring in Berlin tomorrow and some people had cancelled their trip to Berlin because of it. They wanted to know if we had heard anything about it and if we were worried. After we talked for a bit, we all decided to trust our guide and decided to go.

 

We got back to the room, showered, got ready for bed and put out our room service order on our outer door knob.

We were asleep tonight at 10:00.

Edited July 4, 2017 by luvtravel88

[luvtravel88]

Wednesday, May 24 Berlin

Chance of rain and high of 62.

We got up at 6:00 this morning and had room service for breakfast. We requested a 6:00-6:30 delivery time and breakfast arrived about 6:15. They called to let us know they were on their way and someone knocked on the door about 30 seconds later. Breakfast wasn’t bad. We both had omelets, bacon, yogurt, toast and coffee and tea.

We met the other two couples in our group at the Martini Bar at 7:00am. The ship was early getting into port and was already cleared by the time we all met up.

We left the ship together and our driver Bernie, was waiting for us with a sign as soon as we went through the port gates. We quickly boarded the van and off we went. Bernie talked to us in his halting English all the way to Berlin. He had interesting stories to tell as he grew up in Eastern Berlin and was in the Russian military. He became a water border patrol guard and when the wall came down his life changed for the worse. He lost his job and couldn’t find another because he was deemed a Communist. He proudly admitted this, and he doesn’t have much good to say about a Capitalistic Society. He told us the two things he was taught not to talk about behind the wall was politics and the wall. We found him very interesting.

The drive was white knuckle for me, as I sat in the front with him and he averaged 110 miles an hour. There wasn’t much traffic and we arrived in Berlin in 2 hours 10 minutes. Our guide Jeremy, was waiting for us at the spot arranged with Bernie. We got out and stretched our legs for a minute and then our tour began.

We spent the next 6 ½ hours walking and driving. Jeremy talked for the entire time. He was wonderful! He gave us history mixed with interesting stories to tell and humanized our experience there.

He explained the culture during WWII and the culture of Berlin now. The people there are still trying to make up to the world for what happened. He told us there is no national pride except when it comes to sporting events.

We started our tour at Olympic Stadium, where we got out of the van and went up into the Bell Tower.

Notice the clock on the left tower. The right tower had a swastika, but it has been removed. They are not allowed anywhere in Berlin.

 

We saw the area where Hitler held ceremonies of allegiance in the building beside the Bell Tower. We also saw the military parade grounds that the Bell Tower overlooks.

 

We then got back in the van and drove toward the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Jeremy pointed out buildings and areas of interest along the way. We visited this church which is undergoing some restoration inside.

 

 

We then stepped outside and into the beautiful Church of Reunification. The beautiful blue stained glass had been taken from other churches that had been destroyed in the war and placed all together on the walls of this church. There has been intentionally no pattern used with the glass.

 

As we came out of this church, Jeremy pointed to the area where the terrorist attack occurred in December 2016. There were many flowers and candles on this spot and there were people there paying their respects.

 

We got back in the van and were dropped off in a bit for a walking tour. Jeremy showed us the Parliament buildings that are two buildings with a bridge between. One building in the old West Berlin, the other building in the old East Berlin.

[luvtravel88]

We saw several other sites in the area. Jeremy took us to the train station and we went upstairs to see the ceiling and the tracks. We bought sandwiches at the train station for lunch and then we walked a bit to a memorial park for those that died trying to cross the Berlin Wall. As you walked into the memorial, you began to go downhill a bit and there was a wall on either side of you that got higher and higher. It was built so that the top of the walls were always out of reach. It was very quiet at the bottom of the memorial and was quite moving. There were benches at the bottom and it was out of the wind, so we sat and ate our lunch while Jeremy gave us more information.

 

Memorial Park to those that died trying to get across the wall.

Memorial to the first 6 who died trying to go over the wall.

 

Soon after lunch we walked to the area where Hitler’s Bunker was and is now a parking lot. The bunker had been filled in with concrete, but there was a map of the bunker on the edge of the parking lot. We also were shown where his body had been burned.

The lightened stone was the entry to Hitler's Bunker

 

We were taken to the Holocaust Memorial and given some time to walk through it. We then met back up and discussed how we felt about it and why it was designed in the way it was. I had thought I would be much more moved, walking through the memorial, but didn’t have that reaction. There were many other people there, some not being respectful.

 

We walked through a very pretty park and over to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. There was going to a large gathering throughout Berlin the next day to celebrate the 500th birthday of Martin Luther, and President Obama was going to be speaking by the Brandenburg Gate so Security had already roped off the area and we couldn't get up close to it.

 

Reichstag

 

We got back in the van and were taken to the area where the largest piece of the Berlin Wall still exists.

 

We got out of the van and got to walk up to the wall and go into the Topography of Terror Museum which went through Hitler’s rise to power and the atrocities of WWII.

[luvtravel88]

I wanted to add a couple of other interesting pictures. At least I thought so!

A plaque at the spot Reagan gave his, "tear down the wall" speech.

 

 

The bear is Berlin's mascot. All of the Embassies were given a bear to design as they wished. This is the US Embassy's bear.

 

We got back into the van and were driven through areas of the old East Berlin. We rode by what was left of Checkpoint Charlie and into some of the smaller streets. Checkpoint Charlie was razed and this building was a rebuild.

 

Bernie then dropped Jeremy off and then we began our drive back to the ship. We left Berlin at 3:50 and as the next several days were going to be a holiday, traffic to get out of the city was really bad. It took quite a while to make our way to the autoban and when we got about 30 miles away from the port, we were stopped by bridgework going on and the road went down to one lane. It took us almost an hour to make our way to the bridgework and we arrived back to the ship at 7:15, which was in plenty of time, but the ride back was 3 ½ hours. We didn’t know it until later, but there was other work going on and over 1000 people were still not back to the ship at 8:30, many of them were people on Celebrity tours. The ship did wait and we left port about 30 minutes late, at 9:30.

 

We boarded the ship and went to our room where we cleaned up and headed to dinner at Murano. We had been offered dinner there for $30 per person, so we took up the offer. The food was delicious and the service was wonderful. DH had the goat cheese soufflé and a spinach salad and I had a salmon, crab parfait and a mozzarella and tomato salad. We shared chateaubriand for dinner and DH had cocoa cake and I had grand marnier soufflé for dessert.

We have decided that to have the kind of cruise experience that we had 25 years ago when we began cruising, we will have to pay extra for it. Sometimes it’s worth it and sometimes it’s not.

After dinner we sat outside of the restaurant in one of the lounges and listened to a violin duo that were very good.

Off to bed around 10:30 and set the clocks ahead 1 hour before we went to sleep.

[luvtravel88]

So sorry to those of you following this review!! I've been out of town. I'll try to get finished before I leave again at the end of the week.

 

Thursday, May 25 At Sea

We slept until 9:00 this morning. It was very nice not to have to be up and be somewhere. When we got up we went to the buffet for breakfast. It was quite crowded, so many other people had the same idea today.

We went back to our cabin and enjoyed our balcony until about 1:00. I left for a watercolor class at 1:00 where I painted a sunset. I went back to the room about 2:20 and DH and I went up to the buffet for a light lunch.

After lunch, we went to the Hideaway which was outside our door and sat and read until 4:00.

 

If you've not been on the Silhouette before, deck 7 has an area midship called the Hideaway. This is a nice quiet area with lots of seating and nooks for reading, but the really nice thing about it is that they have a 24 hour coffee and tea service there. It makes it very easy to get a cup and not have to go all the way up to the Oceanview Cafe or down to Cafe Bacio. Since we were on deck 7, we used it a lot!

 

We went back to the cabin and showered and got dressed for dinner. Tonight was the second dressy night. We met our group for drinks at 5:00 at the Martini Bar.

We went to dinner in the dining room and met up with some new friends and had a lovely dinner.

 

We commented to the waiter that we’d like our meal to go more quickly and we were finished with dinner before 8:00.

We went to the show at 9:00. It was a comedy/juggler named Pete Matthews. He was very funny and DH thinks we saw him on another cruise.

We came back to the room after the show and got ready for bed. it was a nice day where we really did nothing, and we needed it. Our next 5 days were going to be very busy indeed!

[luvtravel88]

Friday, May 26 Helsinki

It was sunny today and a high of 65.

We set our alarm for 7:00, but hadn’t considered the time change didn’t occur on the ipad since it hasn’t been anywhere to sync the time and we woke up 45 minutes late and were rushing around like mad to leave on time. We actually were only about 5 minutes late in going to breakfast and were on time to meet our group at 8:40 at the Martini Bar and we all walked off the ship together. We met our Alla guide promptly at 9:00. We took the 3 ½ hour Helsinki Highlights tour that included Sibelius Monument and Rock Church.

 

 

We went first to the Sibelius Monument and were given a bit of background and then were given about 20 minutes to walk around and take pictures. It was a very interesting metal monument made up of different sizes of tubes.

 

 

Thought this was a cool picture looking up!

 

We left the monument and re-boarded our bus. The next place we were taken to was Rock Church. It was a very beautiful church made totally of rock. It was basically a round church and people walked in on one side, walked across the front and left on the opposite side. Once back out in the lobby, you could go upstairs to see the church from another perspective.

It doesn't look like much from the outside....

but pretty inside.

 

These directions were in the Ladies Restroom.

[luvtravel88]

We left the church and reboarded the bus. We were then taken to Senate Square and shown the Helsinki Cathedral from the outside. It's quite an imposing building at the top of many stairs. Entry is over on the side.

 

Senate Square

Helsinki Cathedral.

We were then taken to City Hall and stopped to use the bathroom there. They are free and open to the public. We were given a time to meet back or if you wanted, you could make your own way back to the ship.

We left the tour and walked over to the Open Air Market, where we found a booth and got some lunch. DH and I shared a 3 meat plate that had moose meatballs, salmon and fried smelts. It also had some potato balls and mixed veggies with lignonberry jam on the side.

We went to another booth and ordered piggies, which were fried oblong donuts with apple filling and a rhubarb, whipped cream, dough and meringue layer cake. Watch out for the gulls! We watched them take food off an unsuspecting person's plate!!

 

We walked through the Marketplace and did some shopping and made our way over to the Uspenskin Greek Orthodox Church. It is up on a hill, so we climbed up and went inside. It is a small church but very pretty.

 

We climbed back down the hill and crossed over the Marketplace and back through City Hall. City Hall has free wifi and chairs and tables to sit for a while so we stopped for a bit and used the wifi and called home.

We walked back to Senate Square and up the stairs to the Lutheran Church. We were unable to go in as the University of Helsinki was having their Graduation Ceremony for one of their schools. We did get to watch the graduates in their caps and gown. Some of them were in top hats which were those receiving Doctorates. Some had on laurel crowns representing those receiving Masters Degrees. Most were in white gowns, but a few of the men were in bright blue clothing.

 

[luvtravel88]

We went back down to City Hall and turned right onto the Esplanade. It is meant to represent the Champ Elysees in Paris. It was a beautiful wide street with a large grassy strip in the center of the road that had a gorgeous fence and some benches and tables. There were higher end stores all the way down the street on both sides.

 

 

When we finished we took a taxi back to the ship. We shopped a bit along the pier and then reboarded the ship.

We cleaned up for dinner and met everyone at Qsine at 6:30. There were 8 of us and we ordered 9 different items. We were unable to eat the last two and had to cancel them. We did all try dessert and we were all so full we could pop.

The food was all very good and interestingly displayed. There was one surprise after another. You have to go to this restaurant with a lot of people so you can try many different things so having this large of a group was a lot of fun.

Dinner took up most of our evening and we left the restaurant after 9:00. Back to the cabin and then to bed.

Here are some pictures of the food at Qsine.

 

 

 

[FunCruiser56]

loving your review!

 

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[LMKohler]

Great review[emoji106][emoji106]. We are on Silhouette on August 18th. You have given me lots of ideas for Amsterdam. We already have our Anne Frank tickets. Did you get your canal tickets early and online?. How about the Red Light tour or can you do it on your own? Thank you[emoji1][emoji1][emoji1]

 

 

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[mountbiker]

What a great review. We are leaving for this trip on 7/27. Spending a couple of days in Amsterdam on both ends. As this is my first cruise with Celebrity can I ask what the dress code on board was like. As it seems to be somewhat cool there I was planning on jeans most days. Add an international flight and my luggage capacity is also somewhat limited.. thanks for any help

 

Mark

[LMKohler]

Mark, although we have not done the Baltics before, we did do New Zealand earlier this year and it was cool. We wore jeans and khaki's on and off the ship. I am looking at the weather closely. We are also flying so have to take that into consideration.

 

Lucy

 

 

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[mountbiker]

Thank you for the reply.. the bag fee for 2nd checked bag is crazy for international flights. So really trying to pack smart . Plus hate to pull all that luggage around! How was New Zealand btw as it's on our radar for 2019.

 

Mark, although we have not done the Baltics before, we did do New Zealand earlier this year and it was cool. We wore jeans and khaki's on and off the ship. I am looking at the weather closely. We are also flying so have to take that into consideration.

 

Lucy

 

 

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[luvtravel88]

Great review[emoji106][emoji106]. We are on Silhouette on August 18th. You have given me lots of ideas for Amsterdam. We already have our Anne Frank tickets. Did you get your canal tickets early and online?. How about the Red Light tour or can you do it on your own? Thank you[emoji1][emoji1][emoji1]

 

 

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Hi LMKohler,

Thanks for your kind remarks. We booked our canal cruise with Those Damn Boat Guys. Although we didn't really care for our guide, the boat ride through the canals was great and others that did a canal tour with this company loved their guides, so it was just our bad luck. I would make the reservation early if you want to use them. I will say, there were a lot of canal ride companies along the canals so if you didn't want to commit early, you probably could just walk up to one of those.

We did Randy Roy's Red Light District Tours which was fantastic. It was very reasonably priced and included a drink at the end of the tour. I wouldn't try to do the trip on my own as there are lots of small side streets where the girls are and our guide Kimberley, would tell us which ones to go down. She also gave us a lot of interesting information along the way, which would we have no idea about if we hadn't taken the tour. Also, the area can be kind of sketchy at night, so I felt safer with a group and a guide. I would also make a reservation prior to your trip.

Both of these company reservations can be done online.

Kim

[luvtravel88]

What a great review. We are leaving for this trip on 7/27. Spending a couple of days in Amsterdam on both ends. As this is my first cruise with Celebrity can I ask what the dress code on board was like. As it seems to be somewhat cool there I was planning on jeans most days. Add an international flight and my luggage capacity is also somewhat limited.. thanks for any help

 

Mark

 

Hi Mountbiker,

Glad you're enjoying the review!

Dress on the Celebrity is casual day and night. You might find some dress jeans in the evening but men mostly wore khaki type pants and collared shirts to dinner. Women wore pants and nice tops. I would call the dress business casual.

There were 3 dressy nights on our cruise which was 13 nights. This was the first cruise we've taken that DH didn't take a tux and myself dressy dresses.

Hubby wore a jacket, no tie, although he did bring one. I wore a short dress one evening and a skirt and top on the two others. Really not much dressier than business casual. Certainly not cocktail attire.

If you're going to one of the specialty restaurants, people tend to dress up a bit. Men usually have on coats and ties and the women were in a bit dressier clothes, but we did see men in khaki pants and collared shirts and they were also fine.

 

Kim

[LMKohler]

Kim, thank you for all the good information. I will check out both companies.

 

Mark, we did a Sydney to Sydney RT ten day NZ cruise and it was not to be missed. We then spent 7 days in Sydney and then did an 18 day TP to Hawaii on Solstice. A trip of a lifetime and a whole lot of "buckets" got marked off[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

 

By all means - go[emoji106][emoji106][emoji1]

 

Lucy

 

 

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[Islander500]

So very much enjoying your review. :hearteyes:

We are scheduled on a similar itinerary on Silhouette in August and your excellent journal is helping us to focus on what exactly we want to do. I note you are a planner and appear to have your activities very well designed so you made the most of your time abroad. I hope we can match your energy level. Look forward to the rest of your review.

[luvtravel88]

So very much enjoying your review. :hearteyes:

We are scheduled on a similar itinerary on Silhouette in August and your excellent journal is helping us to focus on what exactly we want to do. I note you are a planner and appear to have your activities very well designed so you made the most of your time abroad. I hope we can match your energy level. Look forward to the rest of your review.

 

Hi Islander 500,

Thanks for the compliment and I'm glad you're enjoying the review. I am very much a planner, and have gotten use to my husband's eye rolling!

I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time no matter what you decide to do!

Kim

[luvtravel88]

Saturday, May 27 St. Petersburg

Now for what I considered the "Crown Jewel"of our trip!

 

We got up at 5:50 this morning and were at the Martini Bar at 6:30. We had bought some cherries and blueberries yesterday in Helsinki and we had gotten some yogurt and granola from the buffet the day before. We went out to the Hideaway and got some coffee and tea so we were all set for breakfast.

As soon as all 16 of us were together, we went down to deck 4 and got in line. We were about the 8th people in line. The ship was supposed to arrive in Russia at 7:00 but we weren’t cleared to leave the ship until about 7:45. We quickly got off the ship and got into the Immigration line. There were 100’s of people already lined up when we got in line. They were people taking the ship’s tours and they were allowed off the ship first.

 

 

Somehow our group was asked to go upstairs where there were additional Immigration lines and someone else pointed us into a line that was moving pretty quickly. Immigration moved about one person a minute. There were many lines but they still moved very slowly. We were all through Immigration by 8:45, and all went together to find our Alla tour.

 

We found out later that there were so many people in line, that Celebrity stopped allowing people to leave the ship from 8:15-8:45 to let the crowd die down some. Several other people in other groups, told their groups to meet later than ours and they were much more delayed.

We found the Alla tour sign and since we were all there and together, our guide took us to our van and off we went. We were on our way by 9:00am.

Our guide in St. Petersburg was Irina. She was excellent! She explained how much the guides there have to learn in order to be guides. They must be certified for each place that they enter to conduct tours and they have to study for a year and take a test.

Irina pointed out buildings and landmarks as we made our way to Yusapov Palace.

Here are some pictures of some of the sights.

Church of the Assumption

Senate Building

Egyptian Sphinx

Rostral Column

St. Nicholas Monument

We were able to get off the bus to get up close to this beautiful monument and walk around for a bit. We had to be really careful as there were buses and people everywhere.

[luvtravel88]

Irina led us on a tour of Yusapov Palace and we eventually made our way down to the basement and saw where Rasputin was killed. We spent about an hour on our tour there.

The Palace was absolutely gorgeous, but then this was our first stop and we didn't know any different!

 

 

 

 

In the basement is a re-creation of the room where Rasputin was poisoned, then shot. It was a bit creepy.

Rasputin on the right.

When we left Yusapov Palace we boarded our bus and headed to St. Isaacs Church. This was a beautiful church.

 

 

We spent about 30 minutes here and then we headed to our next stop.

[luvtravel88]

We were dropped off at the subway station and got to ride to two stops to see the gorgeous subway sculptures, chandeliers and wall art.

I've never seen subways like this anywhere!

 

 

 

We then walked to a place called the Summer Palace for lunch. This was an event hall used for various large events. There were many tables set up here and they served lunch continuously. We had brown bread and butter, borcht with sour cream, chicken with veggies and some kind of cake for dessert.

[luvtravel88]

A couple of other interesting pictures...

 

Subway and Coke are everywhere!!

 

After lunch our van picked us back up and we were taken to Peterhoff Palace where we walked along the beautiful gardens behind the Palace. There are 148 fountains in the gardens. We were there about an hour and a half. Irina gave us a lot of information and history about the Tsar’s and how they lived.

 

This area was jaw- droppingly beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Irina then took us to a small souvenir shop and gave us a few minutes to shop.

[luvtravel88]

We then headed to the Church of Spilled Blood. We all filed out of the van and waited for Irina to go get our tickets. She came back to say that the church was closed for a service but would reopen in 15 minutes. She asked if we wanted to stay and wait and come back on Wednesday. It was late and we were all tired, so we decided to come back.

We were then driven to a very large gift shop and were met by a few people at the door offering us each a shot of vodka. At the back of the shop was Alla’s counter where we all got in line to pay for our Alla tours.

Once we had all taken care of our payment, we left to head back to the ship. We had to stop at Immigration to turn our Immigration slip back in. When you go through Immigration, they put a white slip of paper inside your passport. They take this paper back from you when you go back through Immigration in the evening, so be sure you keep it. They don't give you that slip of paper on the subsequent days.

 

We boarded the ship about 6:45.

We had dinner in the dining room and complimented the waiter on the pacing of the meal.

We were to bed very early as we had to get up really early tomorrow.

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.