My husband and I recently enjoyed a fantastic eleven night cruise on board the Emerald Princess in the Baltics and Russia Ref: 118 (26.06. - 07.07.11.). The weather was brilliant, the sea was incredibly calm and all of the ports we visited, apart from one, turned out to be excellent destinations. Each time we favour the independence of doing our own thing in port rather than accepting the expense of organised tours. Our d.i.y. approach adds to the fun and memories we have and also gives the satisfaction of knowing we managed to do and see so much yet spent as little as possible! It may be the glorious sunshine was responsible but we found the city ports to be beautiful with great cultural interest and so, in my opinion, far better than the long haul Carribbean cruises we have done in previous years. We thoroughly enjoyed everything about this cruise.

We arrived in Copenhagen around 10a.m. and were greeted by P.C. Staff and transferred to the cruise port quickly and smoothly. Unfortunately we had to sit and wait for at least an hour before the embarkation process began. Once started though our movement was extremely quick and professionally handled. Having travelled on a sister ship on a previous holiday we knew it was best to head up to the Horizon Court on deck 15 to have our lunch, drop off hand luggage into our cabin and then use the afternoon to see something of Copenhagen. It took about 50 minutes to walk through the commercial port area in order to see The Little Mermaid, The Geffion Fountain and the Kastelet. I was very keen to see these sites as I was uncertain about being able to do so on our return trip to the city when we would have our suitcases in tow.

Warnemunde, Germany which I'd never heard of before turned out to be lovely. In the morning we made a short walk to see the town itself. It turned out to be an extremely pleasant, beautifully clean, colourful, quaint and charming with its cobbled streets. After the centre of town we took some back streets and wandered through a park to get a proper feel for the place and eventually ended up on a fairly quiet promenade. This took us past a lovely lighthouse and a delightful riverside walk in the Alte Strom before returning to the Emerald Princess for lunch. Later we headed to Warnemunde's pretty harbourside and took a 45 minute cruise to the city of Rostock (8 Euros each). Rostock was quite a big settlement in comparison to Warnemunde and so it offered lots of shopping opportunites. After a couple of hours we returned to Warnemunde by train (approx 2 Euros each) and as the station was so close to the ship still had time to stop for some local beer before getting back on board. We hold memories of a delightful day without the hassle of getting up ridiculously early to catch a train for a 3 hour journey to reach Berlin. Read more