This was a very special cruise in many ways. My mom and I loved sailing on Celebrity and had always wanted to see St. Petersburg more than any other place we had yet to experience. She and her childhood friend Patty had booked this itinerary in 2001 (don't think it was the Connie) but had to cancel when mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She held on five years, but never made it to the Baltic and St. P. So Patty and I did it with Pauline's spirit in mind. We booked this specific sailing so we would be in St. P on mom's birthday, which was also the 2nd anniv. of her death. This trip lived up to our expectations beautifully. Allow me to go into a lot of detail on just what worked well, and the few things that did not so perhaps you can learn from our experience.

London - Harwich Having researched the trains, etc., we thought we were lucky to find the "cruise trains" run by National Express, one per major ship sailing date this summer. We stayed at the Hyatt Andaz (and had a free 40 pound breakfast included) which is one block from the Liverpool Street Station, terminus for the "cruise trains" to Harwich. The Andaz is a very high tech, mod version of the old Great Eastern Hotel. Nice, but too techie for us when we couldn't figure out how to turn on lights, telly, etc.

One of the reasons our cruise was so special = the weather. Other than the light rain as we walked to the rail station, we had NO precip on the entire 14 night cruise. Amazing. Read more