Brilliance of the Seas Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,565 reviews

Great days in the Baltic

Review for Europe Cruise on Brilliance of the Seas
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Priusprof
10+ Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: May 2015
Cabin: Junior Suite

This was our first time to do the Baltic itinerary, our fifth cruise on Brilliance, and our 32 RCCL cruise. We are Diamond Plus C&A members and so we know our way around pretty well and know some of the staff from previous cruises. We loved all of the ports and had tours planned in Tallinn, Estonia and St Petersburg, Russia. We did our own touring in the other cities. More about all that later in the review.

Background

We booked this cruise way in advance to cruise with friends and we both booked aft JS staterooms. We scored 1100, the best JS on the ship. The balcony is about the largest balcony for any class stateroom and is a perfect place for sail away parties. It is also mostly out of the wind so it's a perfect place to catch some rays on a sunny but cool day. After checking the airline pricing we decided to cruise over instead of flying. We sailed Quantum transatlantic to Barcelona and spent the 5 days in between cruises in Paris and London. We flew into London very early on Saturday morning and we stayed at the Double Tree Hilton Westminster. It's a great hotel that is reasonably priced, by London standards, and well located to tour by walking around. It is also very convenient to the Hop On Hop Off bus routes. We toured Westminster Abbey on Saturday and Kensington Palace on Sunday and had great weather for touring. We stopped into a pub for snacks by Hyde Park and rode the underground to Pimlico station and walked a few minutes to the hotel. Westminster Abbey is only a 10 minute walk as is Parliament and Big Ben. The Thames is only a couple of blocks east and easy to access. I hired a 16 passenger mini bus to take us to Harwich the morning of the cruise departure. The bus showed up at 10 as scheduled and we loaded up and headed for Harwich. Sailing from Harwich is the one negative because it is 90+ miles away and in London traffic proved to be an adventure. It was a real battle getting out of central London and once we hit the highway the traffic was equally bad. What should have been a two hour trip ended up being four because the driver had to take a 45 minute mandatory break half way through the journey. So he parked us at a rural Shell station/convience store for the better part of an hour. Not so much fun but we were still an hour from Harwich. Once at Harwich we had an easy check in and went for lunch in the Windjammer. Our luggage showed up at the stateroom by about 3:30 and we were unpacked and ready for muster at 4:15. We had a great stateroom attendant who brought us extra hangers and a bucket of ice and we were in business. We have sailed a dozen times on this class of ship and a JS is really a great cabin. It's about the size of a real hotel room and has a bathroom with a tub. It's a 50% bigger cabin than a D balcony and 120 sq ft bigger than an E balcony. We've been in every type of stateroom from an interior to a JS and if the pricing is relatively close or the cruise is a long one this is what I recommend.

Cabin Review

Junior Suite

Cabin JS

Spacious cabin with full size bath, seating area, and walk in closet. The corner aft location gave us a triple sized balcony. There was plenty of storage and the size provided walking around room.

Port Reviews

Harwich

Harwich is an industrial port for the most part and is far away from the airports and London. It is really a burden to travel there to sail. It took us four hours to get there because of traffic and it was 2.5 hours to Heathrow.

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a picturesque city with lots to see and do. We rode on a canal boat and saw some of the waterfront sights before walking to the Tivoli Gardens area. It's a great mixture of the old and the new.

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