This cabin was the best. One deck below the Solarium and the Wind Jammer and just a couple decks above everything else. Very close to the elevator and literally steps away from the Centrum for the nightly festivities. Even though we were close to the Centrum, we had no noise issues due to a large door that was closed nightly at 9pm. 

The (nearly) floor to ceiling windows gave an excellent view. The only complaint we had was that the windows were pretty dirty.

We spent two days in Amsterdam before the cruise. The FreeDAM Walking Tour gave us a good overview of the city and the iAmsterdam card included public transport and entrance to a bunch of museums.

Amsterdam

We had a very short amount of time in Helsinki so we decided to use our St. Petersburg tour operator, TJ Travel, to schedule a Helsinki tour. The tour was ok. We'd read prior that Helsinki didn't really have a lot to see and do for such a short stop and I'd have to agree with that assessment. Most enjoyable was the small market at the Esplanade Park and the public art at the cathedral. Our tour guide also pointed out a spot where Finnish people go to clean their rugs and when we arrived at the Sibelius monument, she said, "I don't know what you were expecting, but this is what you get." This is now my new life motto, so thank you, lovely Helsinki!

We booked a two-day tour with TJ Travel and would recommend TJ a million times ue to their great price (much less than the ship excursion) and small group size—ours was only 13 in a nice little van. We visited the Hermitage on a Monday while it was closed to the public and walked through empty rooms; we went in through the back door at Catherine's Palace and waited approximately two minutes for entry instead of three hours out front; and et cetera. The guide was super knowledgeable and literally walked us to the front of everything. By the end of the second day I was tired of hearing about the amount of gold used to decorate the homes of imperial Russians, but that is not the fault of TJ, but rather my own trip planning failings. So, if imperial Russia is not your thing, the "standard" tour of almost all the tour operators will not be your thing. 

Our evening tour with TJ was meant to be a "Russian experience" and vodka tasting with a small group of six, but it ended up being just us with a guide and a driver and we had a blast on our unexpected private tour. The horseradish vodka is no joke!

A last note about St. Petersburg--the ship folks make a big effort to tell you that official RC shore excursions receive priority clearance through customs. I'm not sure if this is to scare people into buying their pricier tours or to just generally be confusing while maintaining some semblance of crowd control (the nice part of me wants to think the latter!), but it's complete bunk. The Russian customs people don't care one bit who you are touring with and we somehow ended up being the first people through customs. That was super! What was not super was that after clearing customs in three minutes, we had to wait on the other side of customs for over an hour while the rest of our group came through.

Next to St. Petersburg, Tallinn was hands down our favorite port. The town is picturesque and the port is a very short walk from Old Town. We did a free walking tour with Tallinn Free Tours and it was one of the best walking tours we've had in any location, ever. We had a nice, cheap lunch from a bakery and went into the tunnels at Kiek in the Kok before heading back to the ship. A++ town, 11 out of 10, would visit again.

We opted for another local tour with TJ Travel in Stockholm so that we could get to the Vasa Museum and back around to Stockholm's other sights. The Vasa was...a museum! I mean, I guess I'm glad we went there, but if we hadn't gone there, I can't imagine that I would have cared much at all. The story of the Vasa itself is fascinating, but I already knew the story before we got there because I’d read that everyone goes to Vasa and wondered "What the heck is a Vasa?" Walking through the old town was fun, we got another good, cheap lunch at a bakery and one of our favorite souvenirs at the second hand shop near the Nobel Museum. At the Nobel Museum cafe, all the chairs are signed by past Nobel Prize winners, so we had a bit of fun looking under the chairs and trying to find our favorite economists. This was also our only tender port, but our boat was parked literally feet from old town, so while the tendering process itself was a bit of a mess, the boat was in an extremely convenient location at the end of the day.

We aren't sure why we went to Aarhus, but the Danish queen was visiting that day, so we saw the royal yacht. The town is small and very walkable and on the Saturday we were there, there were many street markets and weddings. The Danish Resistance Museum was fascinating and definitely worth a stop if you are at all interested in WWII resistance movements. Most of the written information in the museum is in Danish (obviously), but about half or a little less is translated in English. Even still, the visuals are striking. Aarhus also has a ton of street art and if you have time, the little street called Møllestien is adorable.

Aarhus

The Little Mermaid statue is a fairly short walk from Langelinie pier and downtown Copenhagen is probably another 20 minutes from there. I'd read that there is a bus that runs from that pier to Town Hall Square, but I never saw such a bus. We did the Grand Tour with Copenhagen Free Walking Tours and had a very nice walk and a hot dog snack (on our own, not with the tour).

We booked a two-day tour with TJ Travel and would recommend TJ a million times ue to their great price (much less than the ship excursion) and small group size—ours was only 13 in a nice little van.We chose this cruise initially for the port intensive itinerary and ended up loving both the ports and this little old ship.

Vision of the Seas Review

Amazing ports, great small ship!

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Panoramic Ocean View Stateroom

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Amsterdam

Aarhus

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