This was our 6th cruise (4th on Princess). We chose the cruise to visit a part of the world we had never seen, and because of past good experiences with Princess. Our last cruise was on Carnival and this trip confirmed that we like Princess much better than Carnival. The Carnival Cruise was like a week-long party with a hyperactive cruise director. Princess wants us to see the world, relax, and come home enriched by our new experiences.
This was one of the best trips we have ever taken. The ports were interesting and the service on the ship was excellent. We explored the ports on our own, except for Berlin and St. Petersburg, where we used SPB tours.
We used the Princess transfer and stayed 1 night in Copenhagen in the Scandic Copenhagen. Our plane arrived an hour early but a Princess representative met us as soon as we arrived at the baggage claim. The Princess desk at the hotel was very helpful and was open most of the day.
We had a standard balcony cabin on the Aloha deck. The room and was well arranged with lots of storage space. The balcony was not large, but was big enough for both of us to sit comfortably and enjoy the view.
We bought the Oslo Pass that included admission to museums and public transit, including the ferries. We visited the ski jump in the morning, had lunch on the ship, and visited museums in the afternoon.
We enjoyed walking around the beautiful old town.
We bought a transit pass and took the tram (a short walk from the ship) into the city. We saw the rock church and planned to take the ferry to the fortress island. It started raining very hard so we went back to the ship and did laundry. The weather cleared up in the afternoon and the sail-away past the islands was beautiful.
The weather was too rough to dock so we used tenders to get to shore. We bought tickets for the 1-hour train ride to Stockholm. We walked around the old city and took a ferry (included in the train ticket) to an island with parks and museums.