A Really Great Cruising Experience
Vision of the Seas Cruise Review to Europe - Northern Europe
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 2-3 cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 64
11 Night Baltic (Amsterdam To Copenhagen)
Sail date: July 21, 2017
Ship: Vision of the Seas
Cabin type: Inside
Cabin number: 7111
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
Having cruised just twice before, from Vancouver to Alaska in the Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) and the Yangtze River as part of a China tour, we found the Royal Caribbean considerably superior to either of the other two. It might be the happy confluence of an enthusiastic & entertaining captain, an ebullient & enterprising cruise director, an effervescent & endearing activities manager, and an effective & efficient staff on this particular voyage that made us feel about this cruise that way. There is no question that Royal Caribbean would be at the top of our list if we were ever to consider another cruise.Embarkation
The lineup was too long. Although checkin time slots were published beforehand, right in front of us was a passenger from deck 3 whose checkin time was at least an hour after us (deck 7) if not more. The checkin desk should insist on prioritizing checkins for those whose slots are current or prior. We lost an opportunity to browse around Amsterdam because of this.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
At My Time Dining (a la carte) where we had most of our dinners, servings were of excellent quality. Windjammer had a prodigious array of dishes, many quite delectable. We visited it for most of our breakfasts & lunches. The food at Giovanni's restaurant (speciality dining) was nothing to write home about.
Onboard Activities
The outdoor pool had enough chlorine to kill all of the Baltic Sea's bacteria. I had smarting eyes for quite a while after about a half hours swim in it. The dancing classes were fairly good. Shopping was a disappointment as there weren't a whole lot of stuff that were purchasable.
Entertainment
The ship's band, Soundrise, was pretty good, regularly dishing out good ballroom dancing music. The shows put on by the staff that included the captain, Marek Slaby, the cruise director, Ken Jones, & the activities manager, Angelie, were very entertaining, especially the penultimate night's presentation of the staff based on their nationalities was unique. The captain was very accessible & a great entertainer. The cruise director & the activities manager were also great entertainers. Mr. Slind, who did shows on the historical perspectives of the countries we were visiting, was very educative.
Service and Staff
We couldn't ask for better waiters than the two who served us every night, Ariel & Mohamed, at the My Time Dining (a la carte) dining room. Among the staff at the Windjammer, we found Mihaela Ferecec (waitress), Gabriel (greeter), & Owen Charles (opinion canvasser) to be very friendly and good at what they did. We found Nemo at the Shore Excursion Desk very helpful. Our single visit to Giovanni's Table (speciality dining) was a disappointment as the only three staffers there seem only to be interested in cultivating their regular patronage, clearly showing scant interest in us.
Ship Quality
The layout was pretty good. The location of the Centrum at the ship's centre and its use as an entertainment centre is a great concept. There were adequate number of elevators. The pools were small and not of a great design.
Cabin / Stateroom
The cabin was clean. Supplies were sparse. Replacing the towels twice a day is an overkill. One replacement a day would have been fine with us considering its ecological impact. The bed & pillows were satisfactory (not the greatest).
Ship tip
Sign up for My Time Dining before sailing. Be ready to join in the fun because the staff is fully up to it. Part of the joy of cruising is taking part in the entertainment. Avoid the pools if you can unless they have brought down the chlorine level. There's drinking water free from the ice maker near the Windjammer. Don't get duped into buying water from room service unless you are ready to cough up an arm & a leg.
Thumbs up
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Ports of call
A confusing city, especially for a tourist from North America, full of canals and not as many windmills as what Don Quixote is depicted to have encountered and jousted with. The transit officials were very unhelpful, one ticket clerk even going out of her way to be downright rude without any provocation on my part. They, however, excel in the art of misdirection in a city where English signs are sparse and confusion galore. The transit system should be revamped to handle tourists who come in for the first time with € notes, which is what banks in other countries issue instead of price gauging passengers by requiring the use of credit cards. However, the Airbnb we stayed at on our return trip was owned by a gem of a man. Not only was he greatly helpful, he has also laid out a very decent assortment of food for us to prepare our own breakfast with. Our one night's experience at that Airbnb and the efforts of a couple who went out of their way to help us validate our train tickets at the Amsterdam Centraal Station totally redeemed our faith in the ordinary Amsterdammer.
Warnemunde - A quaint seaside town where two lighthouses standing sentinel along the waterfront and a picturesque street of shops & restaurants along the canal whose colourful boats & ferries complete a breathtaking vista.
Rostock - A rustic city whose sights connote medieval sceneries and houses the oldest university in Europe - yes, it's older than Oxford University! I think it was inaugurated around the time that William the Conquerer was planning his campaign to invade England.
A beautiful, little city plucked right out of medieval times & supplanted in the modern era. It’s tiny enough to be traversed on foot in a single day of good weather. Finding a toilet, however, was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
Of the cities we visited, St. Petersburg wins hands down for grandeur & opulence. Its church spires & alters are encased in gold. Russian architecture of the middle ages is an awesome spectacle to behold. They all bespeak of the obscene riches that the Russian elite enjoyed while her masses toiled. We signed up for 2 shore excursions from the ship for the 2 days the ship was berthed at St. Petersburg. The first covered Sts. Peter & Paul Fortress & Territory, the Church of the Spilled Blood (where the Czar, Alexander II, was killed), the St. Isaacs Cathedral, & a drive along the main shopping street, the Nevsky Prospect (Avenue). The second was an untrammelled stroll along the Nevsky Prospect. If one were to visit Russia on one's own, the visa costs USD 142 pp for Canadians. The ship’s shore excursions skirt that requirement. Our guide for the 2nd excursion, Larissa, was great at her job. Although she let us loose on the Nevsky Prospect, on the drive out & back on the tour coach, she outlined in perfect English with an unmistakably British accent the history of St. Petersburg & Russia. What struck me in her presentation was how dispassionately she described the deprivations that the Russians underwent when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Not a lot of attractions other than an obscure Olympic stadium currently under repairs, the Rock Church (you guessed it, it’s a church under a rock that charged an admission fee, which we decided had not enough bang for the buck), a totally inconspicuous parliament building, a couple of imposing churches, an ordinary-looking palace, and an average street bazaar by the pier, whose prices seem to be on par with those in exclusive malls in North America. Our one-day transit pass allowed us to also take a ride in a ferry to Suomenlina Island, about which we could say not much more than “we’ve been there, done that”.
Another city where all the attractions (not too many to write home about) are within walking distance, even if a strenuous one. They have a cathedral, which looks imposing enough. Then, there's this Vasa Museum that seems to display nothing more than the Vasa, a ship from the glorious days of the Swedish empire that sank on its first voyage when a wave struck it midship and gushed in through the gun turrets that had been opened for a ceremonial firing of the guns, causing the ship to tip over. You see, the king has ordered the builders against their better judgement to make an additional deck of guns to give it more firepower, causing it to be top-heavy. Now, it’s one thing paying Cdn$ 7.50 to watch the dynamic events in Titanic at the cinema, even if its storyline is fictional. It’s quite another paying the equivalence of Cdn$ 20 to watch the static symbol of an epic failure in naval warcraft. So, we decided to give it a miss. The palace looked ordinary compared to Buckingham Palace. The Nobel Museum was tucked away in a street corner that we didn’t even bother to visit. Although, we are great fans of ABBA, we didn’t think that there was a lot more to be gleaned by visiting their museum than what we already knew. The only redeeming feature of downtown Stockholm, imho, is its core, Gamla Stan, where the cobblestone-paved, narrow streets lined by quaint little shops are the stuff of fairytales. The scary part for us was when we nearly got lost returning to the ship although I had the Stockholm map loaded on my iPhone (thanks to our son) with our location been shown by a blue dot even in Airplane mode (thanks to Google).
Another wind farm- & bicycle-oriented country with people generally going about looking too serious for our liking. The driver of the taxi we took to go from the port to the nearest metro station, Osterport, couldn’t have looked any glummer. After giving him our destination, I watched horrified as kM after kM rolled by without seeming to be getting there. On my inquiry, the driver responded that we were heading to the Amsterdam Centraal Station, much to my chagrin. When I protested, he said that he was only joking. There must be a rule that comedians shouldn't look humourless during their act. Near the station, we got confusing directions from different passersby about where to enter. Having got to the platform, we were wondering how to come up with the coins only requirement for the tickets on the ticket machine. We had DKK 22 balance in coins we received from the taxi driver and DKK 350 in DKK 50 notes (their minimum paper currency) that we had bought from our Canadian bank. When we asked a young lady for help, she tried to see how we could solve the problem. Having realized that we needed another DKK 26 in coins for the 2 tickets, she readily coughed up the shortage out of her own pocket. When I proffered a DKK 50 note in repayment, she refused to accept it. After I had collected my wits from being dumbfounded, I had to run after her to get her first name so that I could write about her on review boards. Her name is Belinda - a soul that redeemed our faith in the ordinary Copenhagener.
Disembarkation
Everything went smoothly, except the exit line led directly to the taxi line. We were thinking of catching the bus to Copenhagen Centraal Station. I didn't want to risk losing our position in the taxi line. So, a taxi it had to be.