We chose the cruise to visit St Petersburg and were not disappointed. We booked the SP excursions there through a local company (Insider Tour), as it was a maximum of 6 passengers and Marina our guide was very knowledgeable and helpful. She's been doing it for 37 years!
Embarkation and disembarkation was very smooth and we were impressed with NCLs organisation.
We limited the amount of baggage we took as we weren't sure of the size of the cabin, but we didn't need to worry, we thought it was really big and was larger than the hotel we stayed in in Copenhagen!
The cabin was very comfortable with plenty of storage. It would have been useful to have been given a pitcher of waster each day in order to make tea and coffee.
I did find that I had to keep ringing housekeeping as either there had been no tea or coffee or milk or stirrers left when the room was made up.
We just walked around Warnemunde, a really sweet town. A warning though - we walked towards the beach and got bitten by sand flies. We should have remembered the insect repellent.
We walked from the port to the old town and spent about 3 hours there. It was very pleasant.
We were going to walk around Helsinki but the weather was bad. We decided to take one of the hop on hop off busses that were waiting at the port. It was dry and informative. We didn't get off but had to change cusses 1/2 way round.