Baltic cruise summary

1. Transportation to and from the embarkation/disembarkation port: We flew from San Francisco to London, than to Copenhagen, a total of 20 hours with a few hours delay. We got to Copenhagen at 10:30 and got to the hotel at 11:20 (we need to take atrain at the airport to central station than walk about 10 minutes to the hotel), we wanted to see Copenhagen a little bit before going on to the cruise. Our checkin time at the cruise was from 1:00pm to 4:00pm the next day, since the hotel check out time was 11:00, so we checked out the hotel and rented lockers to store our luggages and then went on to tour the city. Pick up our luggages at the hotel, rode the train to the station closest to the port and walked 25 minutes to the pier where the cruise was - this was another experience since it rained during our walk to the pier, you can imagine us hauling our luggages and walking in heavy rain trying to find the cruise, but we maganed to get there in one piece :-)
Coming back is pretty much the same route except we land at Washington D.C. instead, this was the worst since there were so many people waiting to go through custom, it took 45 minutes to pass immigration, going to our connecting flight was even worse, the gate was about 30 minutes walk from the immigration check point, we had to stop half way to rest before continuing. We only checked in one luggage but it is the one that's missing when we arrived at San Francisco airport, it turned out to be misplaced/delayed due to unspecified reason but was promised to be sent to us in 24 hours. We did get the luggage the next day at home, it has been opened with cutter and stuff inside were all messed up - not sure if this the act of Homeland Security checking suspicious luggages (if this is the case then they are doing a lousy job as the zipper pulls instead of the lock were cut, although in useable form, it is totally disformed - bad act) or people in Washington D.C. airport trying to steal from it.

2. The cruise ship and its services: Emerald Princess is one of the largest cruise ships in the world, it can carry 3100 passengers and 1300 crews, 15 decks, and started service in 2007, so it's a fairly modern and complete cruise ship. There are over 10 cafes/restaurants, a casino, several bars, a theater (house 1500 people), an art gallery, a gym, a spa, 3 pools,... There are 7 different types of cabins - Interior, double, obstructed view double, double with view, double with balcony, mini-suite with balcony, suite with balcony, and family suite with view, each with difference price tag. We originally book the obstructed view double (the window is partially obstructed by a life boat) but the one we have has additional traffic as it is close to a stair, so we changed to interior double which is $100 cheaper, but we did not get cabin assigned until the day before we are to leave San Jose, turned out they overbooked and had to upgrade us to obstructed view double, so we actually pay less but got a better obstructed view double (this particular one is not close to any stair). the view turned out to be ok as we can view the outside fairly well through the top half of the window. There are two buffet cafes where had most of our meals, we did have several meals in two of the sit down restaurants but they do not necessarily provide better food than the buffet, 3 of the other resuaurants charges additional fee (between $20 to @30) to dine there, also we need to pay for bottle water, soft drink, beer, wine, and liquor. They also charge Internet access, almost $1 per minute, the thing is that charging starts right after you login to the system regardless if you are accessing the Internet or not, since it was slow (satellite based) and most of time it is waiting, I tried to check-in our return flight the night before and spent 8 minutes without sucess and was charged $14, was very unhappy about that but could do nothing. There were various onboard entertainments, from musicals, dance, movie, work shops, to art exhibition, there were also programs designed for kids so the parents can enjoy without them around, it is possible that you don't have to leave the ship at all and still have a lot to do or not to do - pure relax.
Our cabin was about 170 sq ft with toilet, sink, shower, queen bed, a couple of chairs, a small table, closet, safe, and writing table - pretty much like a small motel room.

3. Land excursion: Aside from the entertainments provided on the ship, most people will take land excursion once docked at port of call. There are three approaches to touring on land: (1) Book through the cruise ship - The cruise ship advertise before and during the cruise, this is usually more expensive but they do provide some advantages, you get to board the tour bus right at the port of call, no need to take other transportation to get to the tour bus, you get priority when getting off the ship, the down side is that it is more expensive. (2) Through local independent service - this is usually booked at the time of travel arrangement, it is usually less expensive but you need to do some home work (to see which service is more reliable,...) and (3) Self-guided tour - most tour services rush through vista points(barely enough time to take photos, you won't have time to really enjoy it if you like it the place) and take you shopping (weather you want it or not) where they get commissions (this seems to be true for all travel agencies), so a self-guided tour will usually give you more flexibility, you only visit the places you want and stay as long as you like, this, however, means you need to do a lot of research before and during the trip, walking, taking bus, train, metro, ferry are all part of the self-guided tour, probably not good if traveling with the very old or the very young. We self guided all our tours except the one in St. Petersburg, Russia is the only country in our tour requires visa, it is very inconvenient (and probably unsafe) to travel there on your own. We got to see more, experience more, and enjoy more on self-guided tours - sometimes more adventurous.

Anita and I both agree that this will likely be our one and only cruise trip (we think because we can only go on shore where the cruise dock, and this greatly restricted how much time you can spend on shore and being able to tour, for instance, during our port of call at Warnemunde Germany, the excursion to Berlin is 3 hours train ride one way, 4 hours Berlin city tour and another 3 hour train ride back) unless we run into another good deal. The cruise cost is $1100 per person for us, excluding excursion ($380 per person for St. Petersburg excursion) and airfare($1200 airfare per person).