Month: July 2018

This morning, the Serenade of the Seas returned to Stockholm. When we got up about 6:30 a.m. it was sailing through the Swedish Archipelago on glassy smooth water, with the sun up and another beautiful day in store. We ate breakfast about 7:30 and it was very hard to find a place to sit because there were so many people eating early in preparation for disembarking.

The ship docked shortly before 8:00. We had put our large luggage out the night before to be collected, so we only had our small carry-on bags with us. We were in group #19 to disembark. We assembled in the assigned area about 8:30 to wait for our group number to be called. But we didn’t have long to wait. Within 5-10 minutes, our number was called and we left the ship. Walking into the cruise terminal, we found all our bags right away in our group #19 area. So we walked outside and asked for a large taxi from the long lines of waiting cabs. We were in the cab and driving into Stockholm before 9 a.m., sooner than we had expected. The cab driver quickly delivered us to the Hilton at Slussen again.

Our rooms weren’t ready so early, so we left the luggage with Hilton’s bell captain and went upstairs to the executive lounge to get something to drink. Then we walked to a not-busy Gamla Stan and beyond to Norrmalm. The sun was very warm; the high was in the 80s. We did some souvenir shopping and returned to Gamla Stan, where we stopped for coffee and pastries at a shop with outdoor tables in the square. We watched the volume of tourists grow gradually. Then we walked back to the Hilton and found that our three rooms were ready.

After resting and recharging, and watching some of the World Cup final match in the executive lounge, we all met in the lounge again and went out to dinner about 6:45. We walked to the Italian restaurant we had eaten at before we went on the cruise, Da Luigi. We were lucky to get a table outside on the pedestrian-only street, where we watched the people walk by. Both the restaurant and the street were very busy. Then we returned to the hotel, where we turned in early  in order to be able to get up very early for our flights home tomorrow.

Saturday was our day at sea, traveling between Riga and Stockholm, with no stop in a port. Plus we returned to the Central European time zone, so we set our clocks back an hour Friday night. So it was a leisurely day at sea, during which we could sleep in and do whatever we wanted with no deadlines or schedule. We independently walked the ship, ate, worked out in the fitness center, read, listened to music, and napped, whenever we wanted.

It was sunny and in the 60s all day. Various freighter ships could be seen in the distance, each traveling a different direction.

In the evening, we met together to celebrate the cruise by opening our last bottle of champagne. Then we went to our 8:30 dinner in the Reflections dining room. We also had to tag our luggage with disembarkment group numbers and get it ready to be picked up by 11 p.m. Tomorrow, we’re scheduled to disembark at 9:05 a.m. and then pick up our luggage in the Stockholm cruise terminal on shore.

When we woke up this morning, we were still sailing to Riga. We weren’t due to reach the port until 11 a.m. The sky was overcast and the forecast was for rain. We started breakfast about 9:30 in the Reflections dining room, opting for a sit-down breakfast instead of the Windjammer buffet.

Due to the length of our ship, we couldn’t dock at the terminal near old town Riga, instead ending up next to a lumber yard in the industrial area, which is a 30-minute drive from town. Royal Caribbean provided free shuttle buses to take everyone into town. We had tickets for bus #18, which dropped us off near the old town about 12:30.

The old town was medical, similar to Tallinn, but not as extensive. We walked around using the Rick Steves guide again, until we decided it was time for a coffee stop. We found a nice outside table at a bar/restaurant on one of the town squares. It was warm, sunny, and somewhat humid, but very pleasant to sit outside. We had a leisurely coffee and decided to get lunch too.

But as we were nearing the end of our lunch, a thunderstorm started with hard rain. The umbrella over us did a fairly good job of keeping us dry, but many other bar customers were out in it. We paid and left during a relative slack period, but it soon started pouring again and we took shelter in a building’s arched portal. After a few minutes of waiting, it let up slightly and we trotted over the wet cobblestone streets toward the bus pickup point. We were lucky there was a Royal Caribbean bus waiting for us there. We were back on board by 4:45.

By the way, we weren’t thrown out of the formal-attired dinner in the dining room last night. We saw there were many others dressed like us. Dinner tonight will again be in the dining room at 8:30, where the expectation is for smart casual clothes. No problem!

It was another sunny morning on the Baltic when we woke up about 8 a.m. We ate breakfast and deboarded the ship about 10 a.m., immediately finding ourselves among Estonian souvenir stalls. We walked through, leaving the port area and reaching the old town of Tallinn in about 15 minutes.

We again followed the Rick Steves’ walking tour through the medieval and compact old town. It was very picaresque and well maintained, as well as full of tourists. There were four cruise ships at the port, so about 10,000 cruise passengers swarmed the town along with us.

We walked the cobbled streets and stopped to sample Estonian bakery goodies and coffee. We had read that marzipan had been invented in Tallinn, so we tried one of the bakery goodies with marzipan in it, as well as a decadent chocolate croissant and a wonderful creme and berry-filled cake roll. Then we walked around some more.

In the early afternoon, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant on one of the town squares, where we had some appetizer food and rehydrated with water. Then we made our leisurely way back to the ship, arriving about 2:30. The ship is leaving port relatively early today, so we had an all-aboard time set to 3:30. And that was OK, since we had wanted to make this an easier, shorter sightseeing day than the two in St. Petersburg.

Tonight is formal attire night in the dining room and we’ve decided to go there anyway, even though we only have sort-of-dressy clothes. After all, what can they do, kick us off the ship?

It was an extra early wakeup this morning because we had to meet Vadim by 7:30 for the second day of our tour. So we were up about 5:00, eating breakfast at 6:00, and deboarding the boat by 7:00. Today, we breezed through immigration easily. It was so different than yesterday. We made it to the pickup spot outside the terminal by 7:10 and waited for Vadim and Konstantin in the van. They arrived about 5 minutes later. The morning was sunny and slightly warmer than yesterday.

The first thing we did on today’s tour was take a boat ride on the Neva River with a few other TJ Travel groups. It was a one-hour ride on a low boat that could go under the bridges crossing the river. The lady guide’s English wasn’t as clear as Vadim’s, but it was pretty good.

Then we met Vadim again and went to the Hermitage, a huge museum kept in several old royal buildings including the Winter Palace. We were there for a couple of hours with Vadim telling us about the key pieces. We saw paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Raffael, as well as Egyptian sculptures and lots more. It is a huge collection that had been purchased by the czars while they were in power. We ate sandwiches at the Hermitage’s cafe at about 12:00 in order to make it to Catherine’s Palace in time for a 1 p.m. tour reservation for our group.

After a 40-minute drive, we arrived at Catherine’s Palace in the small town of Pushkin. The Palace is another museum that Vadim guided us through, which hasn’t been full restored after being substantially destroyed in World War II by the Germans. But it was beautiful and interesting. After going through its exhibits and the grounds, we drove to a nearby farmers market in the town of Pushkin. It had open stalls of many types of fruits and vegetables, plus everyday clothes and shoes, but nothing interested us. The fruit would have been interesting to try, but we can’t bring unpackaged food onboard the ship.

On the way back to the ship, we stopped at an Orthodox Church that is being used to look at the ornate inside. Then we were brought back to the cruise terminal about 4:30, where Vadim and Konstantin said goodbye. It was a breeze to go through immigration this time.

We watched from an outside upper deck as the ship manuevered out of the dock about 6:45. Then we retired to our staterooms before our 8:30 dinner.