Because I found the information on Cruise Critic very helpful, I wanted to share our experience and hope that other people find it helpful. We are a 50-something American married couple, who have cruised twice before this trip - once in Egypt when we cruised the Nile for five days, and once two years ago, we did a 7-day cruise of the Mexican Riviera with Holland America leaving out of San Diego, which we found to be quite enjoyable. We are seasoned travelers who have lived in 7 US States, lived in Germany for 12 years until 5 years ago and are now back living in Germany. We have traveled to many European countries, mostly on our own.

I think the first thing you should know about this cruise - is that as wonderful as it is to spend two days in St. Petersburg, you must plan on spending hundreds more dollars to be able to do this. You can not enter Russia without a VISA. Since it is expensive and difficult to get a VISA on your own, your only other option is to sign up for a tour or for excursions. Celebrity offers excursions and some time after you book the cruise, you will receive a book called Shore Excursion Guide. You can book shore excursions for any of the ports through Celebrity. But, there is another option and this I learned through Cruise Critic. There are three major tour companies - DenRus, Red October, and Alla. We chose to book a two day tour with DenRus (you can go to their website and read about their tour choices and then book on-line. We booked The Complete St. Petersburg tour - 2 full days of touring). I did a lot of research and compared Celebrity and the three tour companies and felt that with DenRus you got the best deal and the most for your money. We were very pleased with our decision. It cost us $590 for the two of us to join this tour. I know, also, that other people were pleased with their tours with Alla, Red October, and with their Celebrity excursions. I will talk about our Russian tour more later.

We currently live in the Stuttgart area of Germany, so on July 16th, we left our home at 3:00 AM and drove to Amsterdam, Holland. We parked our car at Schipol airport in long-term parking for about 6.50 euro per day, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than parking it at the dock for around 30 euro per day. We grabbed a shuttle bus to Terminal 3, where we caught a train to Central Station. I will admit that this was not easy dragging suitcases. We walked outside of the train station and were told by a Tram attendant that we needed to hop on to Tram 25 to go to the ship terminal, and he pointed to the tram that he said we should take. We hopped on only to find that Tram 25 runs in both directions and not in a circle. To catch the tram to the terminal we would have to be across the street, facing Central Station. We boarded tram 25 as recommended by the ever so helpful information guide but this one was going the wrong way! The correct one would have been a short ride to the ship but since we were on the wrong one, we rode the tram a half hour in the wrong direction and then another half hour in the right direction and finally made it to the ship at about 1:00 PM. My husband wanted to walk to the ship terminal from the train station, which would have been about a 20 minute walk. I thought it would be difficult dragging suitcases, but in retrospect, it might have been best. Read more