We cruised with 8 other friends on the ship. All of us in our 60s except for one couple's daughter and friend in their 20s. We picked this cruise and itinerary because it spent 3 days in St. Petersburg so we could travel to Moscow for one day. I particularly wanted to see Red Square. And none of us had previously traveled in this part of Europe. We have cruised several times before but not on Royal Caribbean. The ship is in need of some refurbishment but overall very clean and easy to navigate. Our cabin was on the 9th floor so it was convenient to most everything. We thought the theatre was quite large and we could always find a group of seats together. Overall we all enjoyed the cruise and places where we docked. We all ate, drank, laughed and took lots of photos.
We flew into Copenhagen the day before and stayed at Hotel Bethel. It is located right on the Nyhavn canal and was a lovely place to stay. The next morning we walked over to see the inside of the Black Diamond Royal Library, since I'm a retired school librarian. Amazing! After that we took a 40 min Canal boat ride with the Netto-Badene company. It was a nice overview of the canal area and of course the backside of the Little Mermaid. We took a taxi (he took a credit card) to the pier area to board the ship.
Embarkation went fairly quickly. We had been sent an approximate time to board but didn't make that early time since we wanted to see more of Copenhagen. RC had lots staff working to check everyone in and I think we stood in line 20 minutes.
It needed some updating especially the sofa and carpet. But it was clean and had lots of storage.
Our guide Christian was excellent. We saw Warnemunde, Wismar and Castle Schwerin. It was well organized and well paced.
We met up with a "friend of a friend" who was the pastor of St. Olaf's church. He showed us has church and town. It was very special to meet him. Our ship docked within walking distance of town.
We used the Rick Steves' book and self guided walking tour to take Bus 14 to the downtown area.