We booked a cruise early in the year for the Baltic Sea on the Norwegian Star. We were worried after we read several reviews that were less than glowing about the same cruise earlier in the year. Those worries were unfounded. We had a great experience aboard the Star. It had recently been refurbished and all the public areas and the cabin were in excellent shape.

We enjoyed each port in its own unique way. Germany offered trips to Berlin, but we chose to go to Rostock and stay nearer the ship. Tallinn is a lovely old city with many photographic opportunities. St. Petersburg was amazing. We booked a private tour and had a wonderful experience seeing the sites, especially the Hermitage. Helsinki was much more modern and had a lovely seaport. We enjoyed Stockholm and even met up with a friend. It was unfortunate that our time in Stockholm was cut short by several hours and that a bike race had closed down much of the downtown streets causing us to have very little time for sightseeing before we had to return to the ship.

The shows were good, but not as good as on the Norwegian Jade, on our previous cruise, last year. We did enjoy several of them, but skipped others. We didn't participate in many of the shipboard activities since we were ashore almost every day. Read more