Baltic Cruise June 12

[el_bandito]

Thank you. Simply... thank you. I too will spend more than i ever have on this trip and you've given me insights that are incredibly useful. Thank you.

 

[TotallyAngelic]

Really enjoyed your Baltic Adventures. Thanks for sharing

 

[Rogillio]

Here is our final report with much more input from by better half.

The Rogillio’s Grand Baltic
Cruise Vacation Adventure
6-9-10 to 6-25-10

DISCLAIMER – as always, this travelogue is written primarily for the Rogillio family to read in years to come to supplement the memories captured on our 2,000+ photos.

TRAVEL

Mike - I had set my alarm to 0530 but woke up just before 0500. By the time I was done with my shower, Casey was up and about. We let the kids sleep till 0600 and by 0640 our taxi was in the driveway. Instead of a typical Crown-Vic taxi, we had a minivan so we did not have to cram 3 people in the back seat. We got to the airport, checked in and since there was no line going thru security, we found ourselves sitting at the gate 1:45 before our flight. So here I sit killing time . . . and waiting . . . it’s gonna be a long day.

1:54 pm, Thursday. I’m sitting in the small lobby of the Melbourne House Hotel in London. As the taxi pulled out of our driveway at home I hit ‘start’ on the stopwatch on my watch. When we got to the hotel I hit ‘stop’ and logged 21:54:49 travel time. Needless to say we are some tarred doggies when we got here. I got a 1:30 nap – the rest of family is still sleeping – so I’m passing time on our travelogue.

Our flights from HSV to Atlanta and Atlanta to Newark were thankfully uneventful. When we got to Newark we found we had to leave the secure area to get to the international terminal and so had to go back thru the security check point again. Fortunately we had nearly 4 hrs to kill in Newark. Since our flight across the Atlantic was first class, we were able to wait in the President’s Club. We ate so much complimentary cheese and crackers that we never ate lunch.

We had the very front row of a brand new Boeing 777. It was awesome! The first class seats recline out to 180 degree to a bed. The entertainment system included 195 different movies to select from and hundreds of TV shows games and CDs. We had a really great meal - Nick, Casey and I all had steak while Jamie had pasta. After dinner we all tried to sleep. Nick was unable to get to sleep but the rest of us got 2 – 3 hrs of sleep. I awoke to Jamie yelling about how she needed help. Poor girl is even more prone to motion sickness than I am and I didn’t think that was possible. She was lying down and sat up and lost it . . . right in her lap! Casey and I spent the next ½ hour getting things cleaned up. Fortunately this happened about an hour before we were to land and she was able to get fresh clothes right after we cleared immigration in Heathrow.

LONDON

After we had gathered our bags and cleaned up a little, we followed the signs to the “underground”. We bought Oyster cards which are kind like prepaid credit cards for subway and bus transportation around London. We put 20 lbs (about $28) on the cards and there was a 3 lb deposit so 92 lbs which I think is about $140. I’m pretty sure we can get back anything we don’t use. We took the Piccadilly line to the Victoria line and got off at Pemlico station. We had to haul our suitcases up flights of stairs, Casey’s was H E A V Y!! A very nice young man that was going down stopped and grabbed Casey’s suitcase and took it up for her. I doubt she would have made it otherwise! Then we wandered around for a while trying to find the hotel.

We got to the hotel about 10 am and they said it would be about noon before our room was ready. We were able to leave our luggage in their “LR” so we didn’t have to lug that with us anymore! We walked around and found a small café and had breakfast. The food was plentiful but not that great. We all had the big breakfast plate and they came standard with sunny-side-up eggs . . . and no one except me likes eggs like eggs that way. Beans were also standard fare for breakfast. For BREAKFAST?? You’ve gotta be kidding me! On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a little shop and bought some chips and candy. We weren’t hungry, just liked looking at the different varieties of drinks and candy.

So we got our room at 1200 and by 1210 were all sawing logs. I woke up about 1:30, took a shower and feel pretty good. I woke Casey up at 2:00 and she got a shower, then we got the kids up and showered and headed out again to see what we can see.

We left the hotel and walked north to Victoria Station and used our Oyster Cards to get on the subway (or tube as they call it in London). We rode the subway to the Westminster stop and went up to have a look around. Big Ben was looming next to Parliament and the Thames River – a scene we’ve seen so many times in movies.

Casey - We wandered around Parliament (had to ask a guard exactly what that building was *G*); we were too late to get into Westminster Abby so wandered around the exterior and ate dinner at an Italian place. Impressions – everything is much smaller and cozier quarters in Europe. We felt rather Brobdignagian sometimes!

Friday Nick came sneaking in to Casey and said he was up and going to eat breakfast. She was tired and had no clue what time it was so waved him on. Fortunately Mike had awakened and knew it was 0530 and told Nick to go back to bed! Finally, the rest of us were up, ready even before the complimentary hotel breakfast room was opened at 0730, that’s kind of a shocker for us, really! We went directly to the Tower of London and spent 3 wonderful hours there. We saw the Crown Jewels (which are FANTASTIC!) as well as climbing up and down stairs to wander walls and rooms in various buildings. We were slack-jawed a lot of the time. {Mike - the tower of London is nearly 1,000 years old and it was hard to get our heads around this. I’ve seen older ‘ruins’ but this place was not in ruins.}

We left the Tower of London, had some lunch and then walked to the Tower Bridge, where we were able to get a birds-eye view of London from the walkways joining the two Towers. We then walked to the far side of the bridge to see how the mechanics of how the bridge sections used to be raised. Phenomenal, the ingenuity and cleverness that was displayed in the steamers, boilers and pistons. I realize significant steps have been made in each age but somehow looking at chips and computers isn’t as fascinating as looking at pieces of machinery!

We’d seen St. Paul’s Cathedral dome from the Tower Bridge and decided to walk there. Geesh, it was a nice walk, but a long one! Mike likened it to seeing the Rockies off in the distance in Kansas and being deceived by how close they looked. {Mike note: remember when Matt Dillon would ride out of Dodge and the next morning was in the mountains? Only Dodge City is 300 miles from the mountains!} We opted to not go in as it was close to closing time and we wanted to be able to take our time, not rush through like the Griswald’s at the Grand Canyon. It was definitely beautiful inside from the brief glimpse we got.

We went back to our hotel to freshen up and headed out to see “Oliver”. We decided to take a bus and stopped on the way at a little hole in the wall deli where we got some delicious salads and other food.

Mike thoroughly enjoyed the play. Fortunately for Mike and Nick, Mike had an usher locate some seats that had a touch more leg room as our assigned seats had their knees jammed up against the seat ahead of them in our “proper” seats. {Mike note: This was such a fun musical! At one point the main character was doing a soliloquy and was looking though looking glasses out at the audience and mentioned ‘rich people’ then looked up into the balcony as he was talking about poor people, then as his gaze went up to the box seats as he mentioned ostentatious folk and bankers and then said “ . . . you’ve got to pick a pocket or two.” As a reference to the song they were singing. I loved the reference to “you’ve got to pick a pocket or two” and used it several times over the next days as we paid ridiculous tourist prices for some things.}

When we left the theatre it was a party atmosphere outside. Bear in mind this was the theatre district and it was Friday night, tons of people were about. We made our way to the tube and Mike/Nick decided to visit Buckingham on the way ‘home’. I don’t believe they really saw anything, but it was something Nick had wanted to see and we’d not gotten it done during the day. {Nick and I went above ground at Green Park station but then learned that Buckingham Palace was at the opposite end of the park. So we walked all the way thru the park . . . in the dark. Evidently park lighting is not an expense the city bears. As Casey wrote, there was not much to see at night except the exterior of the Palace.}

LONDON TO DOVER BY WAY OF LEEDS

Saturday we were up early again. Mike and I walked to National Car Rental, I had a map and was taking notes of how we needed to return. We got a TomTom (GPS receiver/map) and plugged in our hotel address. Oh. My. I knew what streets we needed to turn on but hadn’t realized there was no turning to GET to that street, so we followed Mr. Tom’s suggestions. Oy. Poor Mike, driving a stick, on the right side of the car, driving on the left side of the road, and me, unable to tell exactly WHEN we were to turn as Mr. Tom was different from our Garmin, Ms. GiGi. Add to that the street signs were posted on building sides and couldn’t be read til you were upon the intersection and you have a recipe for some stressful time!

It took us about 15m to walk to the car rental, some 15m to get the car and paperwork and about 30m to get back to the hotel (about a mile from the car rental place)! The kids asked where we’d been when I ran in to get them while Mike was negotiating a U-turn AND parallel parking {in front of a fire plug!}. I think he ended up parking illegally and we just hustled our bags out of the hotel and booked on out of there! We had another minor incident on our way out of town (which lasted forever, btw) as we were in a Right turn only lane and got shunted off where we didn’t want to go. We made it tho, and soon were on an ‘interstate’ heading towards Leeds castle. {We had a brand new car! It had 7 miles on it when we got it! I was glad to find the speedometer was in mph not kph. It was easy to get used to driving on the left side of the road but I never got used to the rear-view mirror being on the left and so felt partially blind not knowing what was on my bumper. You don’t realize how much you instinctively use your rearview mirror till you don’t have it. The roundabouts were the hardest thing to get used to as you went CW not CCW.}

It was pretty darn weird to be sitting on the left side of the car and have no steering wheel in front of me! We made it to Leeds Castle in about an hour and opted to do just a quick tour of the building and see whatever grounds we could see on our walk there. Swoon. I kept imagining riding a horse on this beautifully groomed estate, little streams, ponds, wonderful grassy areas, seeing the swans and peacocks, and enjoying the English countryside. Leeds was an interesting place, basically frozen in time to Lady Bailie’s restorations. I just can’t imagine the manpower it takes to keep the grounds up and looking so immaculate. The place was HUGE! {I was not a fan of this site. While the exterior of the place was classic ‘castle’ the inside had been modernized and was lived in until 1973. So while the castle was built 700 years ago originally, it had lost much of its medieval ‘charm’ IMO.}

Mike was getting antsy about driving on to Dover. This trip had been 20 months in the planning; we did NOT want to miss the boat! We made it in good time, Mike and I both had a brain cramp, “oh, we don’t know where the car rental return place is!” We got directions and Mike opted to take Nick with him as his navigator, so Jamie and I sat and watched people come in while we waited for them. {We stopped to fill up the car with gas and it was only while at the pump that I realized the car was diesel.} While waiting I realized, “DOH, we had the paper in our notebook that has the return address, could have easily plugged that into the TomTom and found our way.” So much for all that proper prior planning!

Truthfully, the notebooks we’d organized prior to the trip have been great. We’d laid out the necessary snippets of information on a PowerPoint chart. {Casey is a planner by nature and by vocation and had information on all our ports-of-call in notebooks with dividers and tabs and such}

Mike - We took the car to the rental place and the guy at the rental place drove us back to the port to drop us off. When we went inside the port it was about 2 pm and the place was virtually empty, that is, no lines for anything. I asked someone if it was crowded earlier and they said, oh yeah, it was packed. Getting there a little later than the earliest check-in time saved us from waiting in long lines. We got our pictures taken, got our “key to the world” room cars, had our pictures taken and boarded the Disney Magic.

EMBARKATION DAY ON THE MAGIC

We booked a category 4 room this time which has a queen size bed, a fold-out sofa-bed and a fold-down Murphy bed. The room includes a verandah or small balcony. Having an external door really helped in keeping the room cool. We slept with the door open every night and the ocean sounds and cool night air made for good sleeping. [Casey here, poor Nick, it was light when we went to sleep and light early in the morning AND he was closest to the open verandah door so if it was cold he was the “first line of defence”! There were a couple of mornings that he was (all 6’2 ½” of him) curled up in a ball. Mike and I were on the other side of the room divider – curtains – so it was a touch darker for us.]

After checking out our room we headed up to the Topsider restaurant buffet for some lunch. We spent the afternoon getting unpacked and settled into the room and getting reacquainted with the ship. Nick found the teen hang-out, The Stack, and met some of the other teens on board.

The first full day on the ship was a sea day and I got up early and did a couple of loads of laundry. The laundry room has soap, washers/dryers that you pay for with the room card. The washer/dryers are each $2. So, with a dollar for soap, a load of laundry costs about $5.

We played a family trivia game after breakfast and then we lost $70 playing bingo. When it comes to bingo, we have never hit a bingo on 6 cruises and countless bingo games . . . so we are due for a big jackpot! ;-) So the first sea day was laid back and relaxing and after all the traveling and sight-seeing in London, it was nice to have a day of R&R.

We were sailing in the North Sea now and it was cold out on deck and the seas were pretty rough. Jamie started getting motion sickness and so did I. They provide free Dramamine on deck 2 at the Medical Office so Jamie and I both took some. This was a mistake as that stuff not only knocked us out for the night, we were lethargic the whole next day! I won’t take that stuff again.

NORWAY

The first port of call was Oslo, Norway. We had toured Norway a few years ago so we were least excited about this port. We docked in the Oslo harbor just a stones throw from Akershus Castle. We walked the short distance to the harbor shuttle boat and bought RT tickets to Bygdoy peninsula to visit the FRAM museum. Afterwards Jamie and I headed back to the ship for a Dramamine-hangover nap and lunch while Casey and Nick visited the Viking ship museum. After lunch [Casey: aboard the ship, which was nice, since we’d “paid for it already” to take advantage of!] we took a leisurely tour of Akershus castle. When we were there a few years ago, the tour was guided but now they’ve gone to audio tours. I like the audio tours as everyone’s interests are different so you can go at your own pace. After the castle tour, Casey saw some stables so we went to visit the horses and after a brief walk thru the gift shops looking for future garage sale items, we got back on the ship.

DENMARK

The next morning we docked in Copenhagen, Denmark. We had planned to walk and/or ride bikes around town but it was very chilly and looked like it might rain so we changed plans and bought tickets to the Jump on/Jump off tour bus. We had exchanged currency to kroner but only had about $100 in local currency. The bus did not take credit cards but did accept US money so we paid $120 for the four tickets. I think we ended up costing ourselves about $20 for not having enough local currency.

The bus tour was nice and we sat on the open upper deck and took pictures to rival oriental tourists at Disney World. We got off at the Rosenborg Slot Castle and toured all floors and basement where they kept the royal jewels. [Casey: JEWELS!! Oh, they were fabulous, absolutely fabulous! I had to be retrieved from the jewel rooms as Mike and kids were tired of waiting for me. This was one of the times we bemoaned the lack of cell phones, much more difficult to keep up with everyone, or we had to stick together and wait for someone that was intrigued with something. Also it was pretty cool to see the wide bike lanes. This wasn’t the only city that had nice bike room. We had to be careful to not walk on the bikeways instead of the sidewalks as we ended up 4 abreast too often!] We then jumped back on the bus and rode some more and got off at Tivoli Gardens. We decided it would be cheaper to eat before going into the park so looked around and darn if there wasn’t a McDonalds and BK right across the street. I wanted to eat local cuisine but Jamie really longed for Mickey-Ds so we had burgers . . . to the tune of $43! [Casey: 54 DKK for a QP, and our exchange rate on the ship was 100 DKK = $16.92 so $9 for a QP meal. Yeeps! The whole meal was 263 DKK, the most expensive Mickey D’s meal I think we’ve ever eaten!]

Tivoli was Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disneyland and it was very obviously where many of the Disneyland motifs came from. Casey and I just had park entrance tickets and the kids had park entrance and rides bracelet. I think admittance alone was about a c-note for the 4 of us and then the ride was another $50 or so more. [Casey: 413 DKK for the rides for 2 kids ($70), 388 DKK at the gate ($65) – NOT putting this into negate Mike’s estimates, just that, well, I like to know exactly, which is why I wrote it down.  ]

Right after the kids rode their second ride a storm rolled in complete with rain, lightning and hail! Nick and I, the two warm-blooded ones, wore shorts and tee-shirts and were comfortable. Casey and Jamie wore jeans and long sleeve and sometimes jackets and were still cold. The weather was actually kinda strange. When the sun was out, it was actually hot. Then the wind would start and the clouds cover the sun and suddenly it was cool bordering on cold.

We left the park about 4 pm and while waiting for our JO/JO bus, saw a Disney tour bus and got a ride back to the port with them.

GERMANY

Casey - In Warnemünde, Germany we had plans for a rental car thru Enterprise Car Rental. Enterprise picked us up at the dock; we were grateful for this as we would never have found our way by foot to the correct location! Truthfully, this was the reason we went with Enterprise vs Avis. I believe Avis also wasn’t going to let us drop the car off at the port either. They lost our business all the way around. We got situated in a Peugeot 4-door 5 on the floor and TH the Enterprise driver had programmed some street addresses into the Garmin for us. Those GPS devices are great, BUT you have to have a street for it to take you to, you can’t just have a town.

We ended up on the A20, basically an interstate highway, and made good time to Lübeck , our first stop of the day. [It was made a free imperial city in 1226 and was the capital of the Hanseatic League, pretty heady stuff imo! {There was no speed limit on the autobahn and we cruised between 70 and 90 most of the time} We saw the Holstentor or Holsten Gate, built in the 1th century to awe visitors and defend against intruders – inside it had a really cool model of Lubek as it appeared in the mid-15th century], and rode an open-air bus: they had only German announcements but the driver/announcer gave me a book in English and I’d listen, pick out a word or two as well as look at where we were and give the scoop on what we were seeing. It was so cool, some of the little stories, such as the really COOL BIG houses were outside the Lübeck city limits to avoid paying taxes. Lübeck got their own back tho, and somehow, someway, enforced no heating in these wonderful houses so the inhabitants had to move back inside the city limits in the winter – which we all know in the northern environs tends to last a tad longer than summer! There was one tiny house, for the carriage house, someone had to live out there and take care of the horses after all! On another street that was not very well kept up we learned that the residents actually petitioned to keep their street rutted and bumpy, seems it slowed down drivers! We walked about the city looking at the architecture then finally (after circling the whole darn thing!) found the door to St. Mary’s cathedral, a very dramatic church, ate at the Rathaus café – where I was SURE that water would be cheaper than a coke so Nick and I got water while Jamie got a coke. BLEAH! €2 for a coke and €2.30 for ghastly sparkling water because I forgot they have a choice over there, sparkling or still! - and got back in our car for the next leg. {This was one of the coolest cities I’ve ever seen. The old town is encircled by a river and canal. Most of the old cathedrals were built in the 12th century and all were made out of red brick. In Wismar, at one of the cathedrals undergoing restoration, they had a brick making demonstration. Nick got to make a brick and carve his name on the brick. Presumably, after the brick is dried and fired, it will be used in the restoration of the church. The coolest cathedral we visited was St Mary’s in Lübeck. During WWII it was hit by an English bombing raid and two of the bells came down and were implanted into the floor of the cathedral . . . where they remain today.}

We’d been fortunate to find a parking garage, but dang, when it was time to leave we couldn’t figure out how to get out of there! Finally someone came on the speaker, said something and raised the barrier. It cost us 4 Euro to get out of there, and none of us were sure the guy that took our money actually worked there . . *G*

We’d discussed going on to Hamburg, but the Frommer’s book didn’t really make it sound all that appealing. We’d spent some time getting started and in Lübeck so we opted to just drive back to Wismar. {Mike: We had some coffee, soft drinks and pie in a little deli. We weren’t really hungry but needed to find a bathroom and we have learned this is a good way to use the facilities. In Lübeck we had to pay to use the public toilet. It was .50 euro to use the woman’s BR or one with a toilet but the urinal/trough or pissior (sic) as it was called was free – well, at least it was not locked.}

We went on A20 for a portion of the way then headed to B105, a more scenic route. It was slower going, 2 lane vs 4, villages vs nothing, but it was much prettier driving.

Wismar had gotten even fewer pages devoted to it than Lübeck , but it was way cool too. Many old houses, cobbled streets, ruined churches, just very pretty to walk about. Wismar also had a St. Mary’s church, but this one was in pretty bad shape. It had been bombed in 1945 and again in 1960 for political reasons. This is where Nick got to make a brick as Mike shared earlier. {Mike: Wismar is a pretty small town but had several 800+ yo cathedrals. We toured a couple of them and I really liked the ones that were in various stages of restoration.} We also wandered to St George, a church that’s getting restored.

We headed back for Rostock and on the way Mike caught a glimpse of something he wanted to check out more, so we pulled a u-ey and man, am I glad he saw that! Turns out it was the monastery at Bad Doberan – which the fellow at Enterprise had given us a German book on and we’d decided we didn’t really want to see. WOW, we didn’t get to go inside but this place was awesome on the exterior.

The drive back to the ship was absolutely gorgeous if you’re into looking at the countryside. I was amazed to see a bike path connecting these small villages, they were not exactly close together! I spoke with a crew member on the ship and she said that it was so flat there, everyone had a bike and rode a lot. Wow.

This was also one of the more thrilling departures. Disney has the 7 notes from “When you wish upon a star” as their signature horn blast when leaving a port. This port had lots of people on the dock as we were negotiating turning the ship around in what seemed a VERY small space! When we got turned around we realized there were people on the other side too! Sailboats, other smaller boats, people waving from land, and we did our part waving madly to everyone as we left. The harbor sounded their horn several times and the Magic sounded hers in return. Very cool to see.

Mike – when we got back to Warnemünde we put diesel [€20 = $24.75] into the car and left the car at the port terminal. It was really nice to be able to drive right to the port. The car, Garmin and drop off fee came to about a c-note. We are so glad we did this rather than try to go into Berlin as that would have meant spending about 5 or 6 hrs on a train and/or bus. We saw a castle/museum, and ½ a dozen cathedrals dating from the 12th century and much of Germany’s country side.

SECOND SEA DAY

The next day (today) was a sea day and we took advantage of this by sleeping late. We did laundry, played games and lost another $70 playing bingo. I backed up our pictures from 3 digital cameras onto Jamie’s mini-laptop and at this point we’d already taken 1,176 pictures and still have 4 more port days ahead of us. We relaxed in the lounges today snacking on various treats and working on our travelogue.

RUSSIA

I was absolutely totally taken with St Petersburg, Russia! We had booked a private 2-day tour on-line and our guide met us at the airport with a sign that read “Welcome Mike Ruggilio” and we just assumed that was probably us. We loaded into a van with me and the driver up front, Nick and our guide Anastasia in the middle row and Casey and Jamie in the back row. Our driver was an older, very stoic man who spoke no English. Anastasia was a 27 yo single woman who worked as a guide in the summer and taught English at university the rest of the year. She was originally from Moscow and moved to St Petersburg when she went to college. She was very knowledgeable about St Petersburg and about Russia in general however, being only 27, she was not able to give much information about life in the USSR under communism.

I was surprised that St Petersburg had so many churches and cathedrals! I asked what became of those places under communistic rule and Anastasia said some of the churches were used for storage of potatoes and such as communism teaches atheism and has no use for or tolerance of any religion. The Church of the Spilt Blood was iconic St Petersburg and absolutely stunning. I won’t begin to describe it as the photos speak for themselves.

We drove about an hour through town and out of town to Catherine’s Palace. We walked from room to room slack-jawed. The place had been totally sacked during WWII but had been completely and meticulously restored. [Casey: as we walked up to the palace I saw people on their knees hand-clipping grass from the edges of flower beds and putting the clippings into buckets. Whoa! I have a note that there is 9K of gold leaf in the hall of mirrors, not sure anymore if that’s $9000 worth of gold leaf or 9 kilos! She told us they used squirrel tail brushes to apply the gilt. There is 6 tons (TONS!!!!) of Amber in the Amber room. It was pretty over-whelming. We saw 8 brides at the palace, it was kind of cool to see these bridal parties.]

The first day we had gotten to St Petersburg about 1 pm and had a Disney shore excursion that evening so we only had about 5 hrs with our private tour. That evening we took a canal tour excursion we had booked thru DCL. In hindsight, this was somewhat of a waste of time. With all the sights we saw with our private tour, the only thing the canal tour bought us was a boat ride and slightly different vantage point of the same sights we’d seen from land. They did supplement the canal tour with some on-board music and dance that was very Russian and quite enjoyable.

The next day our guide and driver met us at 0800 and we visited more sites throughout the city. [Casey: We went to the Peter & Paul cathedral where the royalty is buried then scooted over to the hydrofoil dock where we had some interesting waiting. Anastasia was conversing with other guides, there was some issue. After about 20-30 minutes she gave us the signal and worked her way thru the throngs of people waiting to board the hydrofoil. They were not very happy with us, as we struggled thru to the first ship (docked side by side which was pretty weird imo) I heard one woman complaining and the man on the deck kept saying something about tourists. Anastasia had told us that tourists got thru the lines ahead of the Russians. While it worked well for us I couldn’t help but wonder how we would react if we had to wait and wait in lines only to see other people go ahead of us because they were tourists. We crossed 2 hydrofoils to the 3rd one where we relaxed for a ~30m ride across the harbor to Peterhof to see the gardens and fountains. We’d asked to go to a store while still in St. Petersburg, and of course we were taken to a tourist store where Russian souvenirs abounded. I bought a tiny Faberge inspired egg for 1480 rubles, about $47. Zoicks! I wanted a larger one but just couldn’t bring myself to pay the price.] The Hermitage museum is very impressive with art work that one could spend days enjoying, however, we were so tired after two days of touring St Petersburg, we actually cut the tour short. They said there are some ?? million items on display and to visit them all would take like 11 years . . . or something ridiculous that.

Our tour included a hydrofoil boat ride to Peterhof. This was Peter’s summer palace and was inspired by the fountains he’d seen while at Versailles. The place was very impressive but I found all the gold and fountains gaudy . . . but that’s just me. We made a pretty costly blunder while in this park palace place when we had lunch at the only restaurant. It was a cafeteria style restaurant and we went through the line oblivious to the prices on things. Our lunch bill came to about $100. Ouch! Oh, and it wasn’t that good either!

That night we took another DCL excursion into the city for a Folkloric show. The theater itself was a dump with hard, flat seats but the show was really entertaining. All of the music was in Russian but we still enjoyed it immensely. The dancers were really good and made the show. At intermission they sold trinkets and future garage sale items and we got caught up in the moment and bought a Christmas doll, tee-shirt for Nick and knick-knack frog for Jamie.

[Casey: there are 5M people in S. P. and it shows! Driving was crazy, very few lanes were marked and people just kind of drove wherever they needed to so they could continue forward progress. The street names were only on small lights over some doors if you were lucky, most of the time you just had to know your way around. Oy! Anastasia didn’t know how to drive, she said she paid a private driver (I suppose taxi?) if she needed to get someplace, I can totally see why! In the Hermitage we saw a 3 ton gilded chandelier, a Rafael painting, a Michelangelo “crouching boy” statue and many, many other things, including a golden peacock that was fantastic. As with Catherine’s palace it soon became overwhelming, all the gilt, the objects the sheer quantity of paintings and mirrors and aaaaahhh!!]

FINLAND

We took the complimentary shuttle from the port to the city center in Helsinki. We had found a walking tour of the city in a Frommer’s on-line site and, after we figured out where we were, we explored the city on our own. We found ‘the oldest wooden house in Helsinki’ dating to the early 1800s and we found a military museum commemorating the winter war between Russia and Finland when Russia invaded in 1939and dropped 16,000 bombs on Finland. We visited the famed white Lutheran cathedral, and another red brick cathedral. Jamie and Casey were getting tired of walking so headed back to the ship while Nick and I explored an open air market with numerous food vendors near the marina. We got fried squid and these little fishes that looked liked sardines or minnows only they were fried . . . whole.

When Nick and I got near the shuttle bus pick-up point, Nick decided he too was tired so took the bus back to the ship. I headed north to the Rock Church. It was about a mile walk up to the interesting church and I enjoyed my solitary time where I could walk at my own brisk pace and not have to keep 3 other people in my sights. The Rock Church is literally built in the middle of this huge rock – strange place.

[Casey: We were there on Sunday, so there weren’t any stores open and few people except tourists on the street. It was hysterical to step back and watch us figure out where we got dropped off and where that was on the map! We did learn a lesson tho and didn’t let the bus depart in another city til we got oriented.  We’d followed the Frommer’s tour backwards, which was a little tough at times, but we did it. At one point we passed a door to a museum. I wasn’t for going in, was sure it was closed but Mike tested the door and it was open. And free! It was a mint museum so we got to see some really cool old coins and money and even the plates that were used to print that money. The stores were opening up and more people were about when Jamie and I were running out of steam. We finally found the Market that Frommer’s had told of so Jamie and I walked thru it – to her dismay - I’m sure she thought she’d have to stand around while I shopped but I wasn’t interested in shopping, just looking at items and fondling furs as we passed! I finally found a T-shirt I liked, which was probably the most expensive T-shirt I’ve ever purchased! €19.90 - $25 They had a T-shirt pattern I *really* wanted, but evidently everyone else had too as they had one left, in a small. Oh well!]

SWEDEN

In Stockholm we took the shuttle bus into the city center. I had purchased Hop On/Hop Off tour bus tickets on-line about 2 months before the cruise. This was a big mistake! Due to tidal conditions in Dover, we had to leave Stockholm by 1 pm so we had a short day to explore the city. It got even shorter when we learned the HOHO bus did not start running till 10 am. We got to the city about 8 am and wandered around through the old part of the city. We eventually got on the HOHO bus and rode it to the Vasa museum. This was the highlight of the city! The Vasa ship was build in 1628 and sank in the harbor on her maiden voyage. There were several reasons she sank but basically she was top heavy. She listed to one side and the ballast stones (which were round) rolled over to the side she was listing to compounding the list and water came in through the gun ports and that was it, she sank . . . with all the spectators in the harbor watching her on her maiden voyage. She went down in about 100 feet of water and sank into the mud where she lay for some 300 years. In 1956 they found her and she was still intact! The Baltic Sea is brackish water and evidently the worms that eat wood can’t live in the brackish water so this is the best preserved 17th century ship in the world. I had read about the Vasa on-line before our cruise but was totally shocked when I saw her. She is huge! I had envisioned a much smaller vessel but she looked as big and as ornate as the ships you see in the movies like the HMS Bounty. I could have spent hrs looking at this ship and all the stuff in the museum about how they raised her but we had to get back to the shuttle bus. We ended up abandoning our HOHO bus and walking back to the shuttle point. It was about a 20 minute walk back.

I gave our HOHO tickets to some tourist who was trying to buy tickets from the HOHO ticket guy. The ticket guy told me, “You can’t resell them…” and I said, “I’m not, I’m giving them to her.” And he said “Oh . . . OK, then.” The woman was skeptical but looked at the ticket guy to see if they were for real and he indicated they were and she seemed happy about her free HOHO tickets! I felt better that at least someone would get some use out of the tickets.

Back on ship we took naps and just kinda lazed around and hung out. Stockholm was our last port of call and now we steam west for two days and will make port in Dover, England on Thursday morning.

[Casey: I was so bummed. We wandered around the Gamla Stan, the old town, but I could never figure out where we were on the Frommer map to find the cool things they suggested we see. Then, my info said the Vasa museum didn’t open until 10, which was when the HOHO started running so we killed ~ 30m waiting for 10 am to roll around. Got to the museum and dang if it didn’t open at 0830!!!!!!!!!!!! And it was close enough to walk to. Oh well, lessons learned for others I reckon.]

THIRD SEA DAY

So here I sit in the Quiet Cove lounge working on our travelogue. I woke up before 7 this morning and it is 9 am now and I will go back to the room shortly to see if the rest of the family is up yet.

Looking at the Navigator (ships list/schedule of activities throughout the day) there is not much going on today that we want to see/do. The new movie Prince of Persia is playing this afternoon in one of the theaters and I think we’ll see that – especially since it conflicts with bingo and Casey has already spent $210 looking for that elusive ‘bingo!’ Oh well, she enjoys playing and they make the game really fun. We’ll play again – on our last day and I’m expecting to hit the jackpot and recover our investment! ;-)

We started the cruise with $1,275 onboard credit (OBC) on our account and Casey wondered on day one how we were ever gonna spend that much money on the ship! LOL We originally booked our cruise via the DCL website and so got $25 OBC for ‘booking on-line’. Then I found where a travel agency, Dream Unlimted, was offering $600 OBC if you booked your Baltic cruise through them so I transferred our reservation to them and got that credit. Then, DCL decided to give every passenger $100 OBC so we got another $400. I think the sales for this cruise were not going well and maybe people were canceling so I that is where this give-back came from. Then we were selected to be part of the ‘evaluation team’ for the cruise so get another $250 for that. The eval team is kinda neat. When we sailed on the DCL maiden Med cruise we were semi-randomly selected (based on our demographic of 2A/2C I’m sure) to be part of the evaluation team for the cruise. Basically we provide feedback to a DCL employee every day about what we liked and what didn’t work, provide suggestions feedback on the shows, etc. The DCL employee is very sweet and she has my ‘dream job’ working for DCL going on recon missions, evaluating the competition and finding ways to make DCL better. We sailed on the Med cruise 3 years ago and have stayed in touch with her via email and so when we booked this cruise, we volunteered to be part of her eval team for this maiden Baltic cruise. So we got ‘special gifts’ as well as $250 OBC. Casey has done all the work of checking in and providing our feedback so she has earned the bingo money.

At any rate, we had no problem at all blowing thru the $1275 in OBC . . . and have not even paid our tips yet. I’m not sure what the recommended tip amount is but we generally try to exceed the minimum as we always get great service!

[Casey: it was so cool to reconnect with Candy and Camylle, they were shocked (not surprising!) to see how Nick had grown in the last 3 years. Falcon, our room steward was always congenial and Mario & Jose, our dining room servers were great too!]

LAST DAY AT SEA

Yesterday’s day at sea was relaxing and a well needed break from the previous 4 days of touring the ports of call. Since we were at sea all day, our cruise director, Brett, asked us to please not leave the ship. We complied.

We saw the premier of Toy Story 3 in 3D in the big Walt Disney Theater yesterday afternoon. I got all teary eyed at end of the movie but I won’t say why in case you’ve not seen the movie. Today we plan to see the new release of The Prince of Persia. And yes, Casey spent another $70 trying to hit ‘bingo’. Good thing this is our last day of the cruise or we are going to need ‘intervention’ for Casey’s gambling addiction! 

I watched a presentation yesterday on the history of animation and how Disney went from Steamboat Willie in 1933 or so to the modern computer generated graphics of today. At one point they were interviewing Roy E. Disney (Walt’s bro) and he said during the showing of Disney’s first full length film, “Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs”, there is a scene where all the dwarfs think Snow White is dead and they are all crying and people in the audience were crying. And Roy said the animators were watching and thinking, “this is just a bunch of drawings!” But this showed what a powerful medium animated film had become. I thought it was silly to cry in a cartoon . . . till that afternoon when I saw Toy Story 3 . . . but you will have to see the movie to understand why. 

During dinner last night we went under a bridge in Denmark. It was quite a sight to behold seeing this huge cruise ship fit under that bridge. We ran out on dinner and up to the 10th deck capture the experience in photos but like most photos, all they really do is cause the memory neurons in your brain to fire and can’t capture the experience. Anyway, it was way cool going under the bridge. Evidently we went under the bridge on the way out but it was very late and we were sound asleep.

We are back in the North Sea now and the ship has resumed a gradual rolling from side-to-side. The Baltic sea was calmer/flatter than the Mediterranean and even calmer than the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

Casey was compiling notes yesterday to provide to the evaluation team and asked how we rated the cruise. We all said “excellent!” or the highest rating option she offered. Then the question for hard with the simple follow-up, “Why?”.

Side note. I’m in the Promenade Lounge where they have an internet café at one end and someone just passed by and asked if I was on the internet. I said no and that I was ‘stand alone’. He said he wondered because he was trying to get on the internet but could not get on-line. Evidently the internet is down. It is funny how people forget that we can use computers for something other than internet access!

OK, so back to “why” I rated the cruise “excellent”. I told Casey there was not one or two things but dozens or even hundreds of things that made the trip excellent. Yesterday I was in the pool area and going back and forth between the (heated) pool and the hot tub and I got to thinking how this cruise was different than the Bahama and Caribbean cruises we’ve taken. On those cruises the pool are was always packed with hard bodies in bikinis and such getting tanned and sipping on drinks. We’ve seen almost none of that on this cruise. Probably mostly because the temps on deck have been in the 50s! but I’d think too that the demographics of this cruise are different. Nothing against the “fun in the sun” crowd as I’m as big a fan as the next guy of the sun, but I think this cruise has a lot of people who are cruising for the experiences of the ports. Yes, one can cruise this same cruise on NCL for about ½ the cost but we love the quality and attention to detail Disney provides.

Well the cruise is nearly over and I’m sure I have several hundred emails waiting for me at the office. In 23+ years with Boeing, I have never taken this many days off work for vacation. A few times I found my thoughts going into work and thinking about things I need to do but I consciously decided to not think on those things. We booked this cruise 20 months prior to sailing but in hindsight, those 20 months just flew by. I said in the months prior to this vacation that I’d never again book a vacation that far in advance but really, part of the fun of vacations is the planning and anticipation. I like having a Family Adventure on the horizon somewhere as it helps me remember why I’m slogging away at the office 9 to 10 hrs a day!

Between the cruise, the airfare, the ports-of-call and the bingo, this has been a very expensive vacation. We broke all Rogillio Family Adventure vacation cost records on this trip! We knew going in it was gonna be costly but we also knew that the kids are getting older and will soon be off at college and starting their own families. Woody and Buzz Lightyear are in the attic. **sniff**

Our evaluation team met in Sessions lounge with all the ships officers. Had a good chat with the Captain about Russia. Casey lost $90 chasing that elusive ‘bingo’. I’m going to check her into Gambler’s Anonymous rehab when we get home. 

DEBARKATION DAY

Got up early and got off the ship by about 0900. We then took a taxi (8 lbs) about 1 mile to the National Rental car place and got a very nice Volvo. It was loaded with whistles and bells including built-in GPS nav system. We didn’t know this so rented one with the car and so had two GPS nav systems to direct our travel.

We went to Dover Castle and took the “Secret Tunnels” guided tours and then toured the castle and surrounding grounds. We lost Nick and spent 45 tense minutes looking for him. He was looking for us too and I guess we just kept missing each other. After we left the castle, we drove NW to Canterbury Cathedral but did nothing more than catch a glimpse of it from the outside, took a few pictures and continued on to the airport. We breezed right through security and are now cooling our jets for a couple of hours till our 6:30 flight back to Newark. Our connecting flight is not until Friday morning so we’ll spend the night in Newark before flying home tomorrow.

[Casey: Poor Jamie got sick again on the landing at Newark. Bless her heart. I do not know why she didn’t get sick on the plane from Atlanta to HSV as that was far rougher than any other flt, but I’m glad she didn’t as it was a very small plane. Mike, bless him, was covered in sweat by the time we landed. We got ~ 4.5h of sleep in Newark before it was time to head back to the airport. TH a porter took pity on us and checked us in curbside as the line was NOT moving in the terminal. Even more a TH that we were not riding coach and standing in an extremely long line that doubled back on itself as it ran out of room. But we made it home and WHEW, what a change from one day of a high of 75 and most of them hovering around the low 60’s with nice sea breezes to come back to AL heat and humidity. Our house was 80 degrees inside as I went to bed at 8 pm last night. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

 

[nzdisneymom]

Thanks again for the report and for answering so many questions in this and other threads.

Could you tell me if DCL had the usual marine shampoo and conditioner they've had the last several years?

 

[aurorafan65]

Mike & family - thanks so much for sharing your trip & all your info with us!

I LOVeD your pictures & could actually picture my dh doing the same thing with that statue in Germany (?) where it looks like tug-of-war.

 

[drewmisha]

Thanks for the great trip report. May I ask how did you tip the Anastasia tour guide and the driver for their services?

Here is our final report with much more input from by better half.

The Rogillio’s Grand Baltic
Cruise Vacation Adventure
6-9-10 to 6-25-10

DISCLAIMER – as always, this travelogue is written primarily for the Rogillio family to read in years to come to supplement the memories captured on our 2,000+ photos.

TRAVEL

Mike - I had set my alarm to 0530 but woke up just before 0500. By the time I was done with my shower, Casey was up and about. We let the kids sleep till 0600 and by 0640 our taxi was in the driveway. Instead of a typical Crown-Vic taxi, we had a minivan so we did not have to cram 3 people in the back seat. We got to the airport, checked in and since there was no line going thru security, we found ourselves sitting at the gate 1:45 before our flight. So here I sit killing time . . . and waiting . . . it’s gonna be a long day.

1:54 pm, Thursday. I’m sitting in the small lobby of the Melbourne House Hotel in London. As the taxi pulled out of our driveway at home I hit ‘start’ on the stopwatch on my watch. When we got to the hotel I hit ‘stop’ and logged 21:54:49 travel time. Needless to say we are some tarred doggies when we got here. I got a 1:30 nap – the rest of family is still sleeping – so I’m passing time on our travelogue.

Our flights from HSV to Atlanta and Atlanta to Newark were thankfully uneventful. When we got to Newark we found we had to leave the secure area to get to the international terminal and so had to go back thru the security check point again. Fortunately we had nearly 4 hrs to kill in Newark. Since our flight across the Atlantic was first class, we were able to wait in the President’s Club. We ate so much complimentary cheese and crackers that we never ate lunch.

We had the very front row of a brand new Boeing 777. It was awesome! The first class seats recline out to 180 degree to a bed. The entertainment system included 195 different movies to select from and hundreds of TV shows games and CDs. We had a really great meal - Nick, Casey and I all had steak while Jamie had pasta. After dinner we all tried to sleep. Nick was unable to get to sleep but the rest of us got 2 – 3 hrs of sleep. I awoke to Jamie yelling about how she needed help. Poor girl is even more prone to motion sickness than I am and I didn’t think that was possible. She was lying down and sat up and lost it . . . right in her lap! Casey and I spent the next ½ hour getting things cleaned up. Fortunately this happened about an hour before we were to land and she was able to get fresh clothes right after we cleared immigration in Heathrow.

LONDON

After we had gathered our bags and cleaned up a little, we followed the signs to the “underground”. We bought Oyster cards which are kind like prepaid credit cards for subway and bus transportation around London. We put 20 lbs (about $28) on the cards and there was a 3 lb deposit so 92 lbs which I think is about $140. I’m pretty sure we can get back anything we don’t use. We took the Piccadilly line to the Victoria line and got off at Pemlico station. We had to haul our suitcases up flights of stairs, Casey’s was H E A V Y!! A very nice young man that was going down stopped and grabbed Casey’s suitcase and took it up for her. I doubt she would have made it otherwise! Then we wandered around for a while trying to find the hotel.

We got to the hotel about 10 am and they said it would be about noon before our room was ready. We were able to leave our luggage in their “LR” so we didn’t have to lug that with us anymore! We walked around and found a small café and had breakfast. The food was plentiful but not that great. We all had the big breakfast plate and they came standard with sunny-side-up eggs . . . and no one except me likes eggs like eggs that way. Beans were also standard fare for breakfast. For BREAKFAST?? You’ve gotta be kidding me! On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a little shop and bought some chips and candy. We weren’t hungry, just liked looking at the different varieties of drinks and candy.

So we got our room at 1200 and by 1210 were all sawing logs. I woke up about 1:30, took a shower and feel pretty good. I woke Casey up at 2:00 and she got a shower, then we got the kids up and showered and headed out again to see what we can see.

We left the hotel and walked north to Victoria Station and used our Oyster Cards to get on the subway (or tube as they call it in London). We rode the subway to the Westminster stop and went up to have a look around. Big Ben was looming next to Parliament and the Thames River – a scene we’ve seen so many times in movies.

Casey - We wandered around Parliament (had to ask a guard exactly what that building was *G*); we were too late to get into Westminster Abby so wandered around the exterior and ate dinner at an Italian place. Impressions – everything is much smaller and cozier quarters in Europe. We felt rather Brobdignagian sometimes!

Friday Nick came sneaking in to Casey and said he was up and going to eat breakfast. She was tired and had no clue what time it was so waved him on. Fortunately Mike had awakened and knew it was 0530 and told Nick to go back to bed! Finally, the rest of us were up, ready even before the complimentary hotel breakfast room was opened at 0730, that’s kind of a shocker for us, really! We went directly to the Tower of London and spent 3 wonderful hours there. We saw the Crown Jewels (which are FANTASTIC!) as well as climbing up and down stairs to wander walls and rooms in various buildings. We were slack-jawed a lot of the time. {Mike - the tower of London is nearly 1,000 years old and it was hard to get our heads around this. I’ve seen older ‘ruins’ but this place was not in ruins.}

We left the Tower of London, had some lunch and then walked to the Tower Bridge, where we were able to get a birds-eye view of London from the walkways joining the two Towers. We then walked to the far side of the bridge to see how the mechanics of how the bridge sections used to be raised. Phenomenal, the ingenuity and cleverness that was displayed in the steamers, boilers and pistons. I realize significant steps have been made in each age but somehow looking at chips and computers isn’t as fascinating as looking at pieces of machinery!

We’d seen St. Paul’s Cathedral dome from the Tower Bridge and decided to walk there. Geesh, it was a nice walk, but a long one! Mike likened it to seeing the Rockies off in the distance in Kansas and being deceived by how close they looked. {Mike note: remember when Matt Dillon would ride out of Dodge and the next morning was in the mountains? Only Dodge City is 300 miles from the mountains!} We opted to not go in as it was close to closing time and we wanted to be able to take our time, not rush through like the Griswald’s at the Grand Canyon. It was definitely beautiful inside from the brief glimpse we got.

We went back to our hotel to freshen up and headed out to see “Oliver”. We decided to take a bus and stopped on the way at a little hole in the wall deli where we got some delicious salads and other food.

Mike thoroughly enjoyed the play. Fortunately for Mike and Nick, Mike had an usher locate some seats that had a touch more leg room as our assigned seats had their knees jammed up against the seat ahead of them in our “proper” seats. {Mike note: This was such a fun musical! At one point the main character was doing a soliloquy and was looking though looking glasses out at the audience and mentioned ‘rich people’ then looked up into the balcony as he was talking about poor people, then as his gaze went up to the box seats as he mentioned ostentatious folk and bankers and then said “ . . . you’ve got to pick a pocket or two.” As a reference to the song they were singing. I loved the reference to “you’ve got to pick a pocket or two” and used it several times over the next days as we paid ridiculous tourist prices for some things.}

When we left the theatre it was a party atmosphere outside. Bear in mind this was the theatre district and it was Friday night, tons of people were about. We made our way to the tube and Mike/Nick decided to visit Buckingham on the way ‘home’. I don’t believe they really saw anything, but it was something Nick had wanted to see and we’d not gotten it done during the day. {Nick and I went above ground at Green Park station but then learned that Buckingham Palace was at the opposite end of the park. So we walked all the way thru the park . . . in the dark. Evidently park lighting is not an expense the city bears. As Casey wrote, there was not much to see at night except the exterior of the Palace.}

LONDON TO DOVER BY WAY OF LEEDS

Saturday we were up early again. Mike and I walked to National Car Rental, I had a map and was taking notes of how we needed to return. We got a TomTom (GPS receiver/map) and plugged in our hotel address. Oh. My. I knew what streets we needed to turn on but hadn’t realized there was no turning to GET to that street, so we followed Mr. Tom’s suggestions. Oy. Poor Mike, driving a stick, on the right side of the car, driving on the left side of the road, and me, unable to tell exactly WHEN we were to turn as Mr. Tom was different from our Garmin, Ms. GiGi. Add to that the street signs were posted on building sides and couldn’t be read til you were upon the intersection and you have a recipe for some stressful time!

It took us about 15m to walk to the car rental, some 15m to get the car and paperwork and about 30m to get back to the hotel (about a mile from the car rental place)! The kids asked where we’d been when I ran in to get them while Mike was negotiating a U-turn AND parallel parking {in front of a fire plug!}. I think he ended up parking illegally and we just hustled our bags out of the hotel and booked on out of there! We had another minor incident on our way out of town (which lasted forever, btw) as we were in a Right turn only lane and got shunted off where we didn’t want to go. We made it tho, and soon were on an ‘interstate’ heading towards Leeds castle. {We had a brand new car! It had 7 miles on it when we got it! I was glad to find the speedometer was in mph not kph. It was easy to get used to driving on the left side of the road but I never got used to the rear-view mirror being on the left and so felt partially blind not knowing what was on my bumper. You don’t realize how much you instinctively use your rearview mirror till you don’t have it. The roundabouts were the hardest thing to get used to as you went CW not CCW.}

It was pretty darn weird to be sitting on the left side of the car and have no steering wheel in front of me! We made it to Leeds Castle in about an hour and opted to do just a quick tour of the building and see whatever grounds we could see on our walk there. Swoon. I kept imagining riding a horse on this beautifully groomed estate, little streams, ponds, wonderful grassy areas, seeing the swans and peacocks, and enjoying the English countryside. Leeds was an interesting place, basically frozen in time to Lady Bailie’s restorations. I just can’t imagine the manpower it takes to keep the grounds up and looking so immaculate. The place was HUGE! {I was not a fan of this site. While the exterior of the place was classic ‘castle’ the inside had been modernized and was lived in until 1973. So while the castle was built 700 years ago originally, it had lost much of its medieval ‘charm’ IMO.}

Mike was getting antsy about driving on to Dover. This trip had been 20 months in the planning; we did NOT want to miss the boat! We made it in good time, Mike and I both had a brain cramp, “oh, we don’t know where the car rental return place is!” We got directions and Mike opted to take Nick with him as his navigator, so Jamie and I sat and watched people come in while we waited for them. {We stopped to fill up the car with gas and it was only while at the pump that I realized the car was diesel.} While waiting I realized, “DOH, we had the paper in our notebook that has the return address, could have easily plugged that into the TomTom and found our way.” So much for all that proper prior planning!

Truthfully, the notebooks we’d organized prior to the trip have been great. We’d laid out the necessary snippets of information on a PowerPoint chart. {Casey is a planner by nature and by vocation and had information on all our ports-of-call in notebooks with dividers and tabs and such}

Mike - We took the car to the rental place and the guy at the rental place drove us back to the port to drop us off. When we went inside the port it was about 2 pm and the place was virtually empty, that is, no lines for anything. I asked someone if it was crowded earlier and they said, oh yeah, it was packed. Getting there a little later than the earliest check-in time saved us from waiting in long lines. We got our pictures taken, got our “key to the world” room cars, had our pictures taken and boarded the Disney Magic.

EMBARKATION DAY ON THE MAGIC

We booked a category 4 room this time which has a queen size bed, a fold-out sofa-bed and a fold-down Murphy bed. The room includes a verandah or small balcony. Having an external door really helped in keeping the room cool. We slept with the door open every night and the ocean sounds and cool night air made for good sleeping. [Casey here, poor Nick, it was light when we went to sleep and light early in the morning AND he was closest to the open verandah door so if it was cold he was the “first line of defence”! There were a couple of mornings that he was (all 6’2 ½” of him) curled up in a ball. Mike and I were on the other side of the room divider – curtains – so it was a touch darker for us.]

After checking out our room we headed up to the Topsider restaurant buffet for some lunch. We spent the afternoon getting unpacked and settled into the room and getting reacquainted with the ship. Nick found the teen hang-out, The Stack, and met some of the other teens on board.

The first full day on the ship was a sea day and I got up early and did a couple of loads of laundry. The laundry room has soap, washers/dryers that you pay for with the room card. The washer/dryers are each $2. So, with a dollar for soap, a load of laundry costs about $5.

We played a family trivia game after breakfast and then we lost $70 playing bingo. When it comes to bingo, we have never hit a bingo on 6 cruises and countless bingo games . . . so we are due for a big jackpot! ;-) So the first sea day was laid back and relaxing and after all the traveling and sight-seeing in London, it was nice to have a day of R&R.

We were sailing in the North Sea now and it was cold out on deck and the seas were pretty rough. Jamie started getting motion sickness and so did I. They provide free Dramamine on deck 2 at the Medical Office so Jamie and I both took some. This was a mistake as that stuff not only knocked us out for the night, we were lethargic the whole next day! I won’t take that stuff again.

NORWAY

The first port of call was Oslo, Norway. We had toured Norway a few years ago so we were least excited about this port. We docked in the Oslo harbor just a stones throw from Akershus Castle. We walked the short distance to the harbor shuttle boat and bought RT tickets to Bygdoy peninsula to visit the FRAM museum. Afterwards Jamie and I headed back to the ship for a Dramamine-hangover nap and lunch while Casey and Nick visited the Viking ship museum. After lunch [Casey: aboard the ship, which was nice, since we’d “paid for it already” to take advantage of!] we took a leisurely tour of Akershus castle. When we were there a few years ago, the tour was guided but now they’ve gone to audio tours. I like the audio tours as everyone’s interests are different so you can go at your own pace. After the castle tour, Casey saw some stables so we went to visit the horses and after a brief walk thru the gift shops looking for future garage sale items, we got back on the ship.

DENMARK

The next morning we docked in Copenhagen, Denmark. We had planned to walk and/or ride bikes around town but it was very chilly and looked like it might rain so we changed plans and bought tickets to the Jump on/Jump off tour bus. We had exchanged currency to kroner but only had about $100 in local currency. The bus did not take credit cards but did accept US money so we paid $120 for the four tickets. I think we ended up costing ourselves about $20 for not having enough local currency.

The bus tour was nice and we sat on the open upper deck and took pictures to rival oriental tourists at Disney World. We got off at the Rosenborg Slot Castle and toured all floors and basement where they kept the royal jewels. [Casey: JEWELS!! Oh, they were fabulous, absolutely fabulous! I had to be retrieved from the jewel rooms as Mike and kids were tired of waiting for me. This was one of the times we bemoaned the lack of cell phones, much more difficult to keep up with everyone, or we had to stick together and wait for someone that was intrigued with something. Also it was pretty cool to see the wide bike lanes. This wasn’t the only city that had nice bike room. We had to be careful to not walk on the bikeways instead of the sidewalks as we ended up 4 abreast too often!] We then jumped back on the bus and rode some more and got off at Tivoli Gardens. We decided it would be cheaper to eat before going into the park so looked around and darn if there wasn’t a McDonalds and BK right across the street. I wanted to eat local cuisine but Jamie really longed for Mickey-Ds so we had burgers . . . to the tune of $43! [Casey: 54 DKK for a QP, and our exchange rate on the ship was 100 DKK = $16.92 so $9 for a QP meal. Yeeps! The whole meal was 263 DKK, the most expensive Mickey D’s meal I think we’ve ever eaten!]

Tivoli was Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disneyland and it was very obviously where many of the Disneyland motifs came from. Casey and I just had park entrance tickets and the kids had park entrance and rides bracelet. I think admittance alone was about a c-note for the 4 of us and then the ride was another $50 or so more. [Casey: 413 DKK for the rides for 2 kids ($70), 388 DKK at the gate ($65) – NOT putting this into negate Mike’s estimates, just that, well, I like to know exactly, which is why I wrote it down.  ]

Right after the kids rode their second ride a storm rolled in complete with rain, lightning and hail! Nick and I, the two warm-blooded ones, wore shorts and tee-shirts and were comfortable. Casey and Jamie wore jeans and long sleeve and sometimes jackets and were still cold. The weather was actually kinda strange. When the sun was out, it was actually hot. Then the wind would start and the clouds cover the sun and suddenly it was cool bordering on cold.

We left the park about 4 pm and while waiting for our JO/JO bus, saw a Disney tour bus and got a ride back to the port with them.

GERMANY

Casey - In Warnemünde, Germany we had plans for a rental car thru Enterprise Car Rental. Enterprise picked us up at the dock; we were grateful for this as we would never have found our way by foot to the correct location! Truthfully, this was the reason we went with Enterprise vs Avis. I believe Avis also wasn’t going to let us drop the car off at the port either. They lost our business all the way around. We got situated in a Peugeot 4-door 5 on the floor and TH the Enterprise driver had programmed some street addresses into the Garmin for us. Those GPS devices are great, BUT you have to have a street for it to take you to, you can’t just have a town.

We ended up on the A20, basically an interstate highway, and made good time to Lübeck , our first stop of the day. [It was made a free imperial city in 1226 and was the capital of the Hanseatic League, pretty heady stuff imo! {There was no speed limit on the autobahn and we cruised between 70 and 90 most of the time} We saw the Holstentor or Holsten Gate, built in the 1th century to awe visitors and defend against intruders – inside it had a really cool model of Lubek as it appeared in the mid-15th century], and rode an open-air bus: they had only German announcements but the driver/announcer gave me a book in English and I’d listen, pick out a word or two as well as look at where we were and give the scoop on what we were seeing. It was so cool, some of the little stories, such as the really COOL BIG houses were outside the Lübeck city limits to avoid paying taxes. Lübeck got their own back tho, and somehow, someway, enforced no heating in these wonderful houses so the inhabitants had to move back inside the city limits in the winter – which we all know in the northern environs tends to last a tad longer than summer! There was one tiny house, for the carriage house, someone had to live out there and take care of the horses after all! On another street that was not very well kept up we learned that the residents actually petitioned to keep their street rutted and bumpy, seems it slowed down drivers! We walked about the city looking at the architecture then finally (after circling the whole darn thing!) found the door to St. Mary’s cathedral, a very dramatic church, ate at the Rathaus café – where I was SURE that water would be cheaper than a coke so Nick and I got water while Jamie got a coke. BLEAH! €2 for a coke and €2.30 for ghastly sparkling water because I forgot they have a choice over there, sparkling or still! - and got back in our car for the next leg. {This was one of the coolest cities I’ve ever seen. The old town is encircled by a river and canal. Most of the old cathedrals were built in the 12th century and all were made out of red brick. In Wismar, at one of the cathedrals undergoing restoration, they had a brick making demonstration. Nick got to make a brick and carve his name on the brick. Presumably, after the brick is dried and fired, it will be used in the restoration of the church. The coolest cathedral we visited was St Mary’s in Lübeck. During WWII it was hit by an English bombing raid and two of the bells came down and were implanted into the floor of the cathedral . . . where they remain today.}

We’d been fortunate to find a parking garage, but dang, when it was time to leave we couldn’t figure out how to get out of there! Finally someone came on the speaker, said something and raised the barrier. It cost us 4 Euro to get out of there, and none of us were sure the guy that took our money actually worked there . . *G*

We’d discussed going on to Hamburg, but the Frommer’s book didn’t really make it sound all that appealing. We’d spent some time getting started and in Lübeck so we opted to just drive back to Wismar. {Mike: We had some coffee, soft drinks and pie in a little deli. We weren’t really hungry but needed to find a bathroom and we have learned this is a good way to use the facilities. In Lübeck we had to pay to use the public toilet. It was .50 euro to use the woman’s BR or one with a toilet but the urinal/trough or pissior (sic) as it was called was free – well, at least it was not locked.}

We went on A20 for a portion of the way then headed to B105, a more scenic route. It was slower going, 2 lane vs 4, villages vs nothing, but it was much prettier driving.

Wismar had gotten even fewer pages devoted to it than Lübeck , but it was way cool too. Many old houses, cobbled streets, ruined churches, just very pretty to walk about. Wismar also had a St. Mary’s church, but this one was in pretty bad shape. It had been bombed in 1945 and again in 1960 for political reasons. This is where Nick got to make a brick as Mike shared earlier. {Mike: Wismar is a pretty small town but had several 800+ yo cathedrals. We toured a couple of them and I really liked the ones that were in various stages of restoration.} We also wandered to St George, a church that’s getting restored.

We headed back for Rostock and on the way Mike caught a glimpse of something he wanted to check out more, so we pulled a u-ey and man, am I glad he saw that! Turns out it was the monastery at Bad Doberan – which the fellow at Enterprise had given us a German book on and we’d decided we didn’t really want to see. WOW, we didn’t get to go inside but this place was awesome on the exterior.

The drive back to the ship was absolutely gorgeous if you’re into looking at the countryside. I was amazed to see a bike path connecting these small villages, they were not exactly close together! I spoke with a crew member on the ship and she said that it was so flat there, everyone had a bike and rode a lot. Wow.

This was also one of the more thrilling departures. Disney has the 7 notes from “When you wish upon a star” as their signature horn blast when leaving a port. This port had lots of people on the dock as we were negotiating turning the ship around in what seemed a VERY small space! When we got turned around we realized there were people on the other side too! Sailboats, other smaller boats, people waving from land, and we did our part waving madly to everyone as we left. The harbor sounded their horn several times and the Magic sounded hers in return. Very cool to see.

Mike – when we got back to Warnemünde we put diesel [€20 = $24.75] into the car and left the car at the port terminal. It was really nice to be able to drive right to the port. The car, Garmin and drop off fee came to about a c-note. We are so glad we did this rather than try to go into Berlin as that would have meant spending about 5 or 6 hrs on a train and/or bus. We saw a castle/museum, and ½ a dozen cathedrals dating from the 12th century and much of Germany’s country side.

SECOND SEA DAY

The next day (today) was a sea day and we took advantage of this by sleeping late. We did laundry, played games and lost another $70 playing bingo. I backed up our pictures from 3 digital cameras onto Jamie’s mini-laptop and at this point we’d already taken 1,176 pictures and still have 4 more port days ahead of us. We relaxed in the lounges today snacking on various treats and working on our travelogue.

RUSSIA

I was absolutely totally taken with St Petersburg, Russia! We had booked a private 2-day tour on-line and our guide met us at the airport with a sign that read “Welcome Mike Ruggilio” and we just assumed that was probably us. We loaded into a van with me and the driver up front, Nick and our guide Anastasia in the middle row and Casey and Jamie in the back row. Our driver was an older, very stoic man who spoke no English. Anastasia was a 27 yo single woman who worked as a guide in the summer and taught English at university the rest of the year. She was originally from Moscow and moved to St Petersburg when she went to college. She was very knowledgeable about St Petersburg and about Russia in general however, being only 27, she was not able to give much information about life in the USSR under communism.

I was surprised that St Petersburg had so many churches and cathedrals! I asked what became of those places under communistic rule and Anastasia said some of the churches were used for storage of potatoes and such as communism teaches atheism and has no use for or tolerance of any religion. The Church of the Spilt Blood was iconic St Petersburg and absolutely stunning. I won’t begin to describe it as the photos speak for themselves.

We drove about an hour through town and out of town to Catherine’s Palace. We walked from room to room slack-jawed. The place had been totally sacked during WWII but had been completely and meticulously restored. [Casey: as we walked up to the palace I saw people on their knees hand-clipping grass from the edges of flower beds and putting the clippings into buckets. Whoa! I have a note that there is 9K of gold leaf in the hall of mirrors, not sure anymore if that’s $9000 worth of gold leaf or 9 kilos! She told us they used squirrel tail brushes to apply the gilt. There is 6 tons (TONS!!!!) of Amber in the Amber room. It was pretty over-whelming. We saw 8 brides at the palace, it was kind of cool to see these bridal parties.]

The first day we had gotten to St Petersburg about 1 pm and had a Disney shore excursion that evening so we only had about 5 hrs with our private tour. That evening we took a canal tour excursion we had booked thru DCL. In hindsight, this was somewhat of a waste of time. With all the sights we saw with our private tour, the only thing the canal tour bought us was a boat ride and slightly different vantage point of the same sights we’d seen from land. They did supplement the canal tour with some on-board music and dance that was very Russian and quite enjoyable.

The next day our guide and driver met us at 0800 and we visited more sites throughout the city. [Casey: We went to the Peter & Paul cathedral where the royalty is buried then scooted over to the hydrofoil dock where we had some interesting waiting. Anastasia was conversing with other guides, there was some issue. After about 20-30 minutes she gave us the signal and worked her way thru the throngs of people waiting to board the hydrofoil. They were not very happy with us, as we struggled thru to the first ship (docked side by side which was pretty weird imo) I heard one woman complaining and the man on the deck kept saying something about tourists. Anastasia had told us that tourists got thru the lines ahead of the Russians. While it worked well for us I couldn’t help but wonder how we would react if we had to wait and wait in lines only to see other people go ahead of us because they were tourists. We crossed 2 hydrofoils to the 3rd one where we relaxed for a ~30m ride across the harbor to Peterhof to see the gardens and fountains. We’d asked to go to a store while still in St. Petersburg, and of course we were taken to a tourist store where Russian souvenirs abounded. I bought a tiny Faberge inspired egg for 1480 rubles, about $47. Zoicks! I wanted a larger one but just couldn’t bring myself to pay the price.] The Hermitage museum is very impressive with art work that one could spend days enjoying, however, we were so tired after two days of touring St Petersburg, we actually cut the tour short. They said there are some ?? million items on display and to visit them all would take like 11 years . . . or something ridiculous that.

Our tour included a hydrofoil boat ride to Peterhof. This was Peter’s summer palace and was inspired by the fountains he’d seen while at Versailles. The place was very impressive but I found all the gold and fountains gaudy . . . but that’s just me. We made a pretty costly blunder while in this park palace place when we had lunch at the only restaurant. It was a cafeteria style restaurant and we went through the line oblivious to the prices on things. Our lunch bill came to about $100. Ouch! Oh, and it wasn’t that good either!

That night we took another DCL excursion into the city for a Folkloric show. The theater itself was a dump with hard, flat seats but the show was really entertaining. All of the music was in Russian but we still enjoyed it immensely. The dancers were really good and made the show. At intermission they sold trinkets and future garage sale items and we got caught up in the moment and bought a Christmas doll, tee-shirt for Nick and knick-knack frog for Jamie.

[Casey: there are 5M people in S. P. and it shows! Driving was crazy, very few lanes were marked and people just kind of drove wherever they needed to so they could continue forward progress. The street names were only on small lights over some doors if you were lucky, most of the time you just had to know your way around. Oy! Anastasia didn’t know how to drive, she said she paid a private driver (I suppose taxi?) if she needed to get someplace, I can totally see why! In the Hermitage we saw a 3 ton gilded chandelier, a Rafael painting, a Michelangelo “crouching boy” statue and many, many other things, including a golden peacock that was fantastic. As with Catherine’s palace it soon became overwhelming, all the gilt, the objects the sheer quantity of paintings and mirrors and aaaaahhh!!]

FINLAND

We took the complimentary shuttle from the port to the city center in Helsinki. We had found a walking tour of the city in a Frommer’s on-line site and, after we figured out where we were, we explored the city on our own. We found ‘the oldest wooden house in Helsinki’ dating to the early 1800s and we found a military museum commemorating the winter war between Russia and Finland when Russia invaded in 1939and dropped 16,000 bombs on Finland. We visited the famed white Lutheran cathedral, and another red brick cathedral. Jamie and Casey were getting tired of walking so headed back to the ship while Nick and I explored an open air market with numerous food vendors near the marina. We got fried squid and these little fishes that looked liked sardines or minnows only they were fried . . . whole.

When Nick and I got near the shuttle bus pick-up point, Nick decided he too was tired so took the bus back to the ship. I headed north to the Rock Church. It was about a mile walk up to the interesting church and I enjoyed my solitary time where I could walk at my own brisk pace and not have to keep 3 other people in my sights. The Rock Church is literally built in the middle of this huge rock – strange place.

[Casey: We were there on Sunday, so there weren’t any stores open and few people except tourists on the street. It was hysterical to step back and watch us figure out where we got dropped off and where that was on the map! We did learn a lesson tho and didn’t let the bus depart in another city til we got oriented.  We’d followed the Frommer’s tour backwards, which was a little tough at times, but we did it. At one point we passed a door to a museum. I wasn’t for going in, was sure it was closed but Mike tested the door and it was open. And free! It was a mint museum so we got to see some really cool old coins and money and even the plates that were used to print that money. The stores were opening up and more people were about when Jamie and I were running out of steam. We finally found the Market that Frommer’s had told of so Jamie and I walked thru it – to her dismay - I’m sure she thought she’d have to stand around while I shopped but I wasn’t interested in shopping, just looking at items and fondling furs as we passed! I finally found a T-shirt I liked, which was probably the most expensive T-shirt I’ve ever purchased! €19.90 - $25 They had a T-shirt pattern I *really* wanted, but evidently everyone else had too as they had one left, in a small. Oh well!]

SWEDEN

In Stockholm we took the shuttle bus into the city center. I had purchased Hop On/Hop Off tour bus tickets on-line about 2 months before the cruise. This was a big mistake! Due to tidal conditions in Dover, we had to leave Stockholm by 1 pm so we had a short day to explore the city. It got even shorter when we learned the HOHO bus did not start running till 10 am. We got to the city about 8 am and wandered around through the old part of the city. We eventually got on the HOHO bus and rode it to the Vasa museum. This was the highlight of the city! The Vasa ship was build in 1628 and sank in the harbor on her maiden voyage. There were several reasons she sank but basically she was top heavy. She listed to one side and the ballast stones (which were round) rolled over to the side she was listing to compounding the list and water came in through the gun ports and that was it, she sank . . . with all the spectators in the harbor watching her on her maiden voyage. She went down in about 100 feet of water and sank into the mud where she lay for some 300 years. In 1956 they found her and she was still intact! The Baltic Sea is brackish water and evidently the worms that eat wood can’t live in the brackish water so this is the best preserved 17th century ship in the world. I had read about the Vasa on-line before our cruise but was totally shocked when I saw her. She is huge! I had envisioned a much smaller vessel but she looked as big and as ornate as the ships you see in the movies like the HMS Bounty. I could have spent hrs looking at this ship and all the stuff in the museum about how they raised her but we had to get back to the shuttle bus. We ended up abandoning our HOHO bus and walking back to the shuttle point. It was about a 20 minute walk back.

I gave our HOHO tickets to some tourist who was trying to buy tickets from the HOHO ticket guy. The ticket guy told me, “You can’t resell them…” and I said, “I’m not, I’m giving them to her.” And he said “Oh . . . OK, then.” The woman was skeptical but looked at the ticket guy to see if they were for real and he indicated they were and she seemed happy about her free HOHO tickets! I felt better that at least someone would get some use out of the tickets.

Back on ship we took naps and just kinda lazed around and hung out. Stockholm was our last port of call and now we steam west for two days and will make port in Dover, England on Thursday morning.

[Casey: I was so bummed. We wandered around the Gamla Stan, the old town, but I could never figure out where we were on the Frommer map to find the cool things they suggested we see. Then, my info said the Vasa museum didn’t open until 10, which was when the HOHO started running so we killed ~ 30m waiting for 10 am to roll around. Got to the museum and dang if it didn’t open at 0830!!!!!!!!!!!! And it was close enough to walk to. Oh well, lessons learned for others I reckon.]

THIRD SEA DAY

So here I sit in the Quiet Cove lounge working on our travelogue. I woke up before 7 this morning and it is 9 am now and I will go back to the room shortly to see if the rest of the family is up yet.

Looking at the Navigator (ships list/schedule of activities throughout the day) there is not much going on today that we want to see/do. The new movie Prince of Persia is playing this afternoon in one of the theaters and I think we’ll see that – especially since it conflicts with bingo and Casey has already spent $210 looking for that elusive ‘bingo!’ Oh well, she enjoys playing and they make the game really fun. We’ll play again – on our last day and I’m expecting to hit the jackpot and recover our investment! ;-)

We started the cruise with $1,275 onboard credit (OBC) on our account and Casey wondered on day one how we were ever gonna spend that much money on the ship! LOL We originally booked our cruise via the DCL website and so got $25 OBC for ‘booking on-line’. Then I found where a travel agency, Dream Unlimted, was offering $600 OBC if you booked your Baltic cruise through them so I transferred our reservation to them and got that credit. Then, DCL decided to give every passenger $100 OBC so we got another $400. I think the sales for this cruise were not going well and maybe people were canceling so I that is where this give-back came from. Then we were selected to be part of the ‘evaluation team’ for the cruise so get another $250 for that. The eval team is kinda neat. When we sailed on the DCL maiden Med cruise we were semi-randomly selected (based on our demographic of 2A/2C I’m sure) to be part of the evaluation team for the cruise. Basically we provide feedback to a DCL employee every day about what we liked and what didn’t work, provide suggestions feedback on the shows, etc. The DCL employee is very sweet and she has my ‘dream job’ working for DCL going on recon missions, evaluating the competition and finding ways to make DCL better. We sailed on the Med cruise 3 years ago and have stayed in touch with her via email and so when we booked this cruise, we volunteered to be part of her eval team for this maiden Baltic cruise. So we got ‘special gifts’ as well as $250 OBC. Casey has done all the work of checking in and providing our feedback so she has earned the bingo money.

At any rate, we had no problem at all blowing thru the $1275 in OBC . . . and have not even paid our tips yet. I’m not sure what the recommended tip amount is but we generally try to exceed the minimum as we always get great service!

[Casey: it was so cool to reconnect with Candy and Camylle, they were shocked (not surprising!) to see how Nick had grown in the last 3 years. Falcon, our room steward was always congenial and Mario & Jose, our dining room servers were great too!]

LAST DAY AT SEA

Yesterday’s day at sea was relaxing and a well needed break from the previous 4 days of touring the ports of call. Since we were at sea all day, our cruise director, Brett, asked us to please not leave the ship. We complied.

We saw the premier of Toy Story 3 in 3D in the big Walt Disney Theater yesterday afternoon. I got all teary eyed at end of the movie but I won’t say why in case you’ve not seen the movie. Today we plan to see the new release of The Prince of Persia. And yes, Casey spent another $70 trying to hit ‘bingo’. Good thing this is our last day of the cruise or we are going to need ‘intervention’ for Casey’s gambling addiction! 

I watched a presentation yesterday on the history of animation and how Disney went from Steamboat Willie in 1933 or so to the modern computer generated graphics of today. At one point they were interviewing Roy E. Disney (Walt’s bro) and he said during the showing of Disney’s first full length film, “Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs”, there is a scene where all the dwarfs think Snow White is dead and they are all crying and people in the audience were crying. And Roy said the animators were watching and thinking, “this is just a bunch of drawings!” But this showed what a powerful medium animated film had become. I thought it was silly to cry in a cartoon . . . till that afternoon when I saw Toy Story 3 . . . but you will have to see the movie to understand why. 

During dinner last night we went under a bridge in Denmark. It was quite a sight to behold seeing this huge cruise ship fit under that bridge. We ran out on dinner and up to the 10th deck capture the experience in photos but like most photos, all they really do is cause the memory neurons in your brain to fire and can’t capture the experience. Anyway, it was way cool going under the bridge. Evidently we went under the bridge on the way out but it was very late and we were sound asleep.

We are back in the North Sea now and the ship has resumed a gradual rolling from side-to-side. The Baltic sea was calmer/flatter than the Mediterranean and even calmer than the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

Casey was compiling notes yesterday to provide to the evaluation team and asked how we rated the cruise. We all said “excellent!” or the highest rating option she offered. Then the question for hard with the simple follow-up, “Why?”.

Side note. I’m in the Promenade Lounge where they have an internet café at one end and someone just passed by and asked if I was on the internet. I said no and that I was ‘stand alone’. He said he wondered because he was trying to get on the internet but could not get on-line. Evidently the internet is down. It is funny how people forget that we can use computers for something other than internet access!

OK, so back to “why” I rated the cruise “excellent”. I told Casey there was not one or two things but dozens or even hundreds of things that made the trip excellent. Yesterday I was in the pool area and going back and forth between the (heated) pool and the hot tub and I got to thinking how this cruise was different than the Bahama and Caribbean cruises we’ve taken. On those cruises the pool are was always packed with hard bodies in bikinis and such getting tanned and sipping on drinks. We’ve seen almost none of that on this cruise. Probably mostly because the temps on deck have been in the 50s! but I’d think too that the demographics of this cruise are different. Nothing against the “fun in the sun” crowd as I’m as big a fan as the next guy of the sun, but I think this cruise has a lot of people who are cruising for the experiences of the ports. Yes, one can cruise this same cruise on NCL for about ½ the cost but we love the quality and attention to detail Disney provides.

Well the cruise is nearly over and I’m sure I have several hundred emails waiting for me at the office. In 23+ years with Boeing, I have never taken this many days off work for vacation. A few times I found my thoughts going into work and thinking about things I need to do but I consciously decided to not think on those things. We booked this cruise 20 months prior to sailing but in hindsight, those 20 months just flew by. I said in the months prior to this vacation that I’d never again book a vacation that far in advance but really, part of the fun of vacations is the planning and anticipation. I like having a Family Adventure on the horizon somewhere as it helps me remember why I’m slogging away at the office 9 to 10 hrs a day!

Between the cruise, the airfare, the ports-of-call and the bingo, this has been a very expensive vacation. We broke all Rogillio Family Adventure vacation cost records on this trip! We knew going in it was gonna be costly but we also knew that the kids are getting older and will soon be off at college and starting their own families. Woody and Buzz Lightyear are in the attic. **sniff**

Our evaluation team met in Sessions lounge with all the ships officers. Had a good chat with the Captain about Russia. Casey lost $90 chasing that elusive ‘bingo’. I’m going to check her into Gambler’s Anonymous rehab when we get home. 

DEBARKATION DAY

Got up early and got off the ship by about 0900. We then took a taxi (8 lbs) about 1 mile to the National Rental car place and got a very nice Volvo. It was loaded with whistles and bells including built-in GPS nav system. We didn’t know this so rented one with the car and so had two GPS nav systems to direct our travel.

We went to Dover Castle and took the “Secret Tunnels” guided tours and then toured the castle and surrounding grounds. We lost Nick and spent 45 tense minutes looking for him. He was looking for us too and I guess we just kept missing each other. After we left the castle, we drove NW to Canterbury Cathedral but did nothing more than catch a glimpse of it from the outside, took a few pictures and continued on to the airport. We breezed right through security and are now cooling our jets for a couple of hours till our 6:30 flight back to Newark. Our connecting flight is not until Friday morning so we’ll spend the night in Newark before flying home tomorrow.

[Casey: Poor Jamie got sick again on the landing at Newark. Bless her heart. I do not know why she didn’t get sick on the plane from Atlanta to HSV as that was far rougher than any other flt, but I’m glad she didn’t as it was a very small plane. Mike, bless him, was covered in sweat by the time we landed. We got ~ 4.5h of sleep in Newark before it was time to head back to the airport. TH a porter took pity on us and checked us in curbside as the line was NOT moving in the terminal. Even more a TH that we were not riding coach and standing in an extremely long line that doubled back on itself as it ran out of room. But we made it home and WHEW, what a change from one day of a high of 75 and most of them hovering around the low 60’s with nice sea breezes to come back to AL heat and humidity. Our house was 80 degrees inside as I went to bed at 8 pm last night. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

 

[drewmisha]

Thanks for the great trip report. May I ask how did you tip the Anastasia tour guide and the driver for their services?

Here is our final report with much more input from by better half.

RUSSIA

I was absolutely totally taken with St Petersburg, Russia! We had booked a private 2-day tour on-line and our guide met us at the airport with a sign that read “Welcome Mike Ruggilio” and we just assumed that was probably us. We loaded into a van with me and the driver up front, Nick and our guide Anastasia in the middle row and Casey and Jamie in the back row. Our driver was an older, very stoic man who spoke no English. Anastasia was a 27 yo single woman who worked as a guide in the summer and taught English at university the rest of the year. She was originally from Moscow and moved to St Petersburg when she went to college. She was very knowledgeable about St Petersburg and about Russia in general however, being only 27, she was not able to give much information about life in the USSR under communism.

I was surprised that St Petersburg had so many churches and cathedrals! I asked what became of those places under communistic rule and Anastasia said some of the churches were used for storage of potatoes and such as communism teaches atheism and has no use for or tolerance of any religion. The Church of the Spilt Blood was iconic St Petersburg and absolutely stunning. I won’t begin to describe it as the photos speak for themselves.

We drove about an hour through town and out of town to Catherine’s Palace. We walked from room to room slack-jawed. The place had been totally sacked during WWII but had been completely and meticulously restored. [Casey: as we walked up to the palace I saw people on their knees hand-clipping grass from the edges of flower beds and putting the clippings into buckets. Whoa! I have a note that there is 9K of gold leaf in the hall of mirrors, not sure anymore if that’s $9000 worth of gold leaf or 9 kilos! She told us they used squirrel tail brushes to apply the gilt. There is 6 tons (TONS!!!!) of Amber in the Amber room. It was pretty over-whelming. We saw 8 brides at the palace, it was kind of cool to see these bridal parties.]

The first day we had gotten to St Petersburg about 1 pm and had a Disney shore excursion that evening so we only had about 5 hrs with our private tour. That evening we took a canal tour excursion we had booked thru DCL. In hindsight, this was somewhat of a waste of time. With all the sights we saw with our private tour, the only thing the canal tour bought us was a boat ride and slightly different vantage point of the same sights we’d seen from land. They did supplement the canal tour with some on-board music and dance that was very Russian and quite enjoyable.

The next day our guide and driver met us at 0800 and we visited more sites throughout the city. [Casey: We went to the Peter & Paul cathedral where the royalty is buried then scooted over to the hydrofoil dock where we had some interesting waiting. Anastasia was conversing with other guides, there was some issue. After about 20-30 minutes she gave us the signal and worked her way thru the throngs of people waiting to board the hydrofoil. They were not very happy with us, as we struggled thru to the first ship (docked side by side which was pretty weird imo) I heard one woman complaining and the man on the deck kept saying something about tourists. Anastasia had told us that tourists got thru the lines ahead of the Russians. While it worked well for us I couldn’t help but wonder how we would react if we had to wait and wait in lines only to see other people go ahead of us because they were tourists. We crossed 2 hydrofoils to the 3rd one where we relaxed for a ~30m ride across the harbor to Peterhof to see the gardens and fountains. We’d asked to go to a store while still in St. Petersburg, and of course we were taken to a tourist store where Russian souvenirs abounded. I bought a tiny Faberge inspired egg for 1480 rubles, about $47. Zoicks! I wanted a larger one but just couldn’t bring myself to pay the price.] The Hermitage museum is very impressive with art work that one could spend days enjoying, however, we were so tired after two days of touring St Petersburg, we actually cut the tour short. They said there are some ?? million items on display and to visit them all would take like 11 years . . . or something ridiculous that.

Our tour included a hydrofoil boat ride to Peterhof. This was Peter’s summer palace and was inspired by the fountains he’d seen while at Versailles. The place was very impressive but I found all the gold and fountains gaudy . . . but that’s just me. We made a pretty costly blunder while in this park palace place when we had lunch at the only restaurant. It was a cafeteria style restaurant and we went through the line oblivious to the prices on things. Our lunch bill came to about $100. Ouch! Oh, and it wasn’t that good either!

That night we took another DCL excursion into the city for a Folkloric show. The theater itself was a dump with hard, flat seats but the show was really entertaining. All of the music was in Russian but we still enjoyed it immensely. The dancers were really good and made the show. At intermission they sold trinkets and future garage sale items and we got caught up in the moment and bought a Christmas doll, tee-shirt for Nick and knick-knack frog for Jamie.

[Casey: there are 5M people in S. P. and it shows! Driving was crazy, very few lanes were marked and people just kind of drove wherever they needed to so they could continue forward progress. The street names were only on small lights over some doors if you were lucky, most of the time you just had to know your way around. Oy! Anastasia didn’t know how to drive, she said she paid a private driver (I suppose taxi?) if she needed to get someplace, I can totally see why! In the Hermitage we saw a 3 ton gilded chandelier, a Rafael painting, a Michelangelo “crouching boy” statue and many, many other things, including a golden peacock that was fantastic. As with Catherine’s palace it soon became overwhelming, all the gilt, the objects the sheer quantity of paintings and mirrors and aaaaahhh!!]

QUOTE]

 

[WeLoveABD]

Mike--we were on the June 12 Baltic as well, and like your family we were happily selected to provide comments to the Disney folks on board. Likely we crossed paths! Anyway, thanks for your detailed report--I'll use it along with my own notes to put something together. We had a few pre-days in London, and during the cruise opted for Disney excusions in Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm, and for Berlin and St. P we did private tours (with two other families we knew from a prior Adventures By Disney trip). In Copenhagen, we did the Tivoli Garden tour in the AM (in before the regular crowds can come in--one of the key selling points for us), and the canal tour before leaving the tour and walking back through town to the ship.

Quick tips: highlighters were great for marking up the Personal Navigator each day; a travel alarm that lights up helped me get my bearings when I would wake up and wonder what time it was (no clocks in the cabin are lit up). We brought roughly $50 in local currency with us for each port day, and that was generally enough for pastries, coffee, small gifts--and for the few larger gifts, we brought a credit card that was not normally used (and was not tied to any direct deposits/payments--so if it got stolen or was misused it wouldn't create a huge headache later).

We decided against HOHO buses as I was concerned about spending a lot of time waiting for the next bus to arrive to take us to the next point--and the added stress of getting back to the ship on time. Sometimes those buses fill up and you have to wait for the next one. Most of these port cities had great ground transportation (subways, buses)--and some you could just walk around in from the ship (especially Oslo and Copenhagen).

It was colder that we anticipated, so we had many pairs of shorts and short sleeved shirts that went unworn. For laundry, there are three laundromats on board and you use your Key to the World card--$2 a load to wash, same to dry. Good luck finding an empty one!

My one regret: that we didn't have more time in Stockholm (cut short because of the tide issues and docking in Dover). Otherwise, a fantastic voyage!

 

[Rogillio]

Thanks again for the report and for answering so many questions in this and other threads.

Could you tell me if DCL had the usual marine shampoo and conditioner they've had the last several years?

Yes! That foul smelling green shampoo. It is aweful. I swore the last time I cruised I was gonna bring some decent shampoo and soap but forgot about it.

~Mike

 

[Rogillio]

Thanks for the great trip report. May I ask how did you tip the Anastasia tour guide and the driver for their services?

We had exchanged dollars for rubles on the Magic the day before we got to SPR. I think we tipped the driver about $35 and our guide about $50. I have no idea if this is considered a 'good tip' or a bad one....it just seem like the right amount. They were very knowledgable and Anastasia spoke clearly and loud enough for us all to hear and was always asking if we needed a bathroom break and such.

~Mike

 

[Rogillio]

Mike--we were on the June 12 Baltic as well, and like your family we were happily selected to provide comments to the Disney folks on board. Likely we crossed paths! Anyway, thanks for your detailed report--I'll use it along with my own notes to put something together. We had a few pre-days in London, and during the cruise opted for Disney excusions in Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm, and for Berlin and St. P we did private tours (with two other families we knew from a prior Adventures By Disney trip). In Copenhagen, we did the Tivoli Garden tour in the AM (in before the regular crowds can come in--one of the key selling points for us), and the canal tour before leaving the tour and walking back through town to the ship.

Quick tips: highlighters were great for marking up the Personal Navigator each day; a travel alarm that lights up helped me get my bearings when I would wake up and wonder what time it was (no clocks in the cabin are lit up). We brought roughly $50 in local currency with us for each port day, and that was generally enough for pastries, coffee, small gifts--and for the few larger gifts, we brought a credit card that was not normally used (and was not tied to any direct deposits/payments--so if it got stolen or was misused it wouldn't create a huge headache later).

We decided against HOHO buses as I was concerned about spending a lot of time waiting for the next bus to arrive to take us to the next point--and the added stress of getting back to the ship on time. Sometimes those buses fill up and you have to wait for the next one. Most of these port cities had great ground transportation (subways, buses)--and some you could just walk around in from the ship (especially Oslo and Copenhagen).

It was colder that we anticipated, so we had many pairs of shorts and short sleeved shirts that went unworn. For laundry, there are three laundromats on board and you use your Key to the World card--$2 a load to wash, same to dry. Good luck finding an empty one!

My one regret: that we didn't have more time in Stockholm (cut short because of the tide issues and docking in Dover). Otherwise, a fantastic voyage!

Can't tell from your screen name if you are male or female but if you are male, I think Casey and I talked to your wife in Diversions on the last sea day when we had the meet/greet with the crew in Diversions. Is your wife a vedry pretty, slender blond? I don't think you were there though?

I would love to read your TR and see how the excursions were. We did every port on our own except SPR. I think the only port I wish we had taken a tour on was Stockholm.

~Mike

 

[Rogillio]

Here are the pictures to accompany the trip report. Between 3 digital cameras, we took 2,270 pictures. I tried to select 150 that gave a good 'flavor' of the trip.

http://s184.photobucket.com/albums/x143/CasMicRog/Baltic Cruise 2010/?albumview=slideshow

~Mike

 

[WeLoveABD]

Mike--my wife tells me that she did speak to you while we were in the meet/greet in Sessions--I was there yaking with the VP and then Brent (I have the extreme blonde beard!).

We took about 800 photos--I edited/deleted as we went, and downloaded the first half to our small laptop and on blind faith deleted the first 400 from the camera card to start on the second half. All worked out--my wife is organizing our photo album(s) on shutterfly, and I'll add the text.

Hey all Disboarders! This was our fifth trip on the Magic, but the first time we really were aware of the fish extenders, gifts and the like--it was a nice addition to the trip, and thanks to all who provided some cool (and often very practical) gifts, such as the note pad with magnet to hang on the door, the calendar...

We were absolutely maxed out on our weight for bags (Delta was pretty strict--I was at 52 pounds and they were going to charge me $90 for the extra 2 pounds, but we managed to rearrange things to other bags while at the ticket counter). The cool weather kept us all in long pants, coats for many of the days--but I think the other three trips to the Baltic will be warmer.

 

[Goin2CtheMouse]

Here are the pictures to accompany the trip report. Between 3 digital cameras, we took 2,270 pictures. I tried to select 150 that gave a good 'flavor' of the trip.

http://s184.photobucket.com/albums/x143/CasMicRog/Baltic Cruise 2010/?albumview=slideshow

~Mike

Awesome Travelogue, Mike. And again, thanks for sharing with us. We're on the July 6th and have been waiting for the trip reports to come in! We leave for LHR this Saturday ...
__________________

 

[OurDogCisco]

Great review! Thank you for sharing...

 

[Kewz1]

I just stumbled upon your TR. We live in north Alabama also. Small world! We're looking at taking a Med cruise (Or maybe the Baltic!) in 2012 My kids will be 16 & 18. I figure it will be close to a "last hurrah" for us as a family too.

Looking forward to hearing about your adventure. Back to reading now...

Kristen

 

[Hellyer4]

Thank you so much for all this great information. We are sailing on the 6th of July.

 

[Deb T.]

Thank you so much for all this great information. We are sailing on the 6th of July.

Welcome to the DIS Boards, Hellyer4!

Come on over to our July 6th Baltic Cruise Thread and meet everyone on our sailing:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1975441

 

[Rogillio]

I just stumbled upon your TR. We live in north Alabama also. Small world! We're looking at taking a Med cruise (Or maybe the Baltic!) in 2012 My kids will be 16 & 18. I figure it will be close to a "last hurrah" for us as a family too.

Looking forward to hearing about your adventure. Back to reading now...

Kristen

We did the Med cruise in 2007 and loved it! Not sure which one was better....the Med or the Baltic. It's kinda like asking someone which one of their children the love the most. We loved the both! BTW, our were 17 and 19 on this cruise.

 

[kreedham]

Had a wonderful time and met lots of folks.

Had positive experience with 2 Hop On Hop Off bus. Got family ticket...not too expensive.

Suggestion to last 2 Baltic Cruisers-book a tour in St P with denrus-SPD tours. Their largest tour is 16 people and they will help you find a group that needs/wants to add people. Saw a lot but needed a little more time at Peterhof Gardens. But otherwise this 2 day tour was great! Got to meet Connie and Chuck, Carol and her family, as well as Pete and Faith and their children. Good group of people to tour with.

Wished we had more time in Stockholm. For that matter wish we had more time at all ports even if it was just another hour or two. Loved Tivoli Gardens and the rides there too!

Pack light...had to shuffle stuff around cause Delta was strict and expensive about 2 extra pounds.

Really enjoyed London as we weren't on a schedule! That's the biggest drawback of a cruise.

Best Tip-IMHO-if you are traveling from London to Dover get to St. Pancras Rail/Tube station. They have a "fast train" that gets to Dover in an hour. Cost only about 60 GBP round trip and that's for 2 adults and 2 kids!