COPENHAGEN
We arrived in Copenhagen in mid-afternoon and took Princess transfers to the ship. The Crown Princess is beautiful, but huge!I'm not sure if I'll be able to get around this ship without getting lost. Jasmine was pretty tired from a slumber party last night, so she napped in the cabin while I went to dinner with some friends from Cruise Critic. It was great to meet everyone after months of online discussions.

Later Jasmine went to watch "Hairspray" at Movies Under the Stars up on deck, while I unpacked.  We are in a mini-suite, and are very happy with the size and storage space.  

AT SEA
Today was our only full day at sea on this trip. I started out the day with spa appointments, and Jasmine hit Shockwaves (the 8-12 year olds hangout)as soon as they opened.  After a bit of exploring we discovered that even though the Crown is a large ship, it's actually pretty easy to find your way around.

We spent the afternoon lounging at the pool, visiting the boutiques onboard, and just enjoying being lazy.  Tonight was formal night, but we decided to skip it. Jasmine ate dinner at the Kid's Dinner at Shockwaves, and I had room service and some more research on Stockholm.

STOCKHOLM
The room service arrived right on time this morning, so thanks to my pot of coffee, I was able to get both of us up and out of the cabin before 7am, so we could pickup our tender tickets.  We were on the first tender ashore and on the first shuttle bus into the city.   The bus took us into the downtown area, and we were able to walk from there to the Vasa Museum.  The Vasa was a ship that sank on her maiden voyage in the 1600s - never even made it out of the harbor! After 300 years underwater she was raised in the 1970s and is on display in the Vasa Museum. Although the paint is worn off, the ship itself is still mainly intact. It was a fascinating exhibit - definitely a must see! After the Vasa we took a ferry back to the Old Town area.

We'd wanted to go to the City Hall, where the Nobel Prize winners banquet is held, but decided to do the palace instead. We were able to tour all of the palace museums, and then went to the city square where the famous bloodbath was held hundreds of years ago.

We also went into the coronation church where the Nobel Prize winners are invited to speak. The church was both beautiful and inspiring. We spent some time shopping in Old Town and then it was time to meet the bus back to the ship. We were definitely ready to go back, as it was pretty darn hot today. As we walked back to the bus, Jasmine said I think I lost weight today!

HELSINKI
We had beautiful weather today! We explored Helsinki on our own, and it was very easy to get around on their transportation system. And Jasmine found a hidden Mickey on the sidewalk!

We visited the beautiful Church of the Rock. Yes, it's a church built inside a rock formation! It was kind of strange looking outside but beautiful on the inside.

 

We had a great time visiting the rest of the city.  We saw the Lutheran church in the main square, visited a gorgeous Russion Orthodox church, shopped on market square, and took a ferry to the Suomenlinna fortress. Jasmine even made friends with some of the locals!

After another long day ashore, it was time to hit the pool back onboard the Crown.

Later we went to tonight's show which was called Motor City, and was a tribute to Motown.  We both enjoyed it.  We hit the sack right after though, as we need to be up bright and early for the first day of our St Petersburg tour.

ST PETERSBURG
The ship docked overnight in St Petersburg, and we had a private 2-day tour with some of our Cruise Critic shipmates.  We'd made the arrangements through Alla tours, and our guide Angie was absolutely wonderful. There were 7 of us, which was a perfect size for the group.

Some of the highlights were:

Catherine's Palace

The Gardens at Peterhof including the trick fountains

The Russian Artillery Museum

St Isacs Cathedral

The Church on the Spilt Blood

Touring the Hermitage

Yusopov's Palace - complete with scene recreating the murder of Rasputin

And watching the White Nights from our balcony. This picture was taken around 11pm!

TALLINN
We easily walked into the Old Town from the ship, and had a great time exploring. What a beautiful city!

Back onboard, I crashed for the afternoon. But Jasmine went to a behind the scenes tour of the theatre. She came back filled with information about the dancers, dressing rooms, costumes etc. She even gave me a few spoilers about the big show tonight! Tonight was the second formal night onboard, and this time we dressed up. And the show -Destination Anywhere- was as good as Jasmine had promised.

GDYNIA
We docked in Gdynia, and took a ship's excursion to the old city of Gdansk where we toured the city, visited St Mary's church, and watched an Amber polishing demonstration.  Afterwards I bought Jasmine an amber pendant. 

Later we had a traditional Polish lunch, and then went out to the seaside resort of Sopot.

WARNEMUNDE
This morning we took the ship's Berlin on Your Own excursion. We were transported by private train into Berlin and then taken to a central meeting point in the city.

We had plenty of time to walk to all the sights we wanted to see including Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall Museum.   It was really neat to see all the different items that folks had used to escape from the East to the West.  We even saw the balloon that the families who were portrayed in the movie Night Crossing had used!   Jasmine stood on the line where the wall used to be with one foot on each side.  And then we went to a section of the wall that is still standing. 

We also went to the Holocaust memorial, Brandenberg Gate, and the new US Embassy which is causing so much controversy. 

It was really easy to get around, and we had plenty of time before catching our ride back to the ship.

COPENHAGEN
We arrived back into Copenhagen at noon today.  And after days of sunshine, we finally had some rain.  We took a shuttle bus into town, and grabbed a Hop On Hop Off bus for a grand tour of Copenhagen including the Little Mermaid statue. 

Afterwards, we went to see the Hans Christian Andersen statue and then hit Tivoli Gardens for the rest of the day.  It continued to rain on and off, but we still had a great time.  Jasmine said the rides at Tivoli were some of the scariest she's been on! 

Sadly the evening was spent packing up and getting ready to disembark in the morning.  We were off the ship bright and early the next day.  We took Princess transfers back to the airport, and I was at work before noon!  

We had a wonderful time on this trip and want to return back to the Baltics someday.  We also booked another Princess cruise onboard.   Right now we're tentatively booked on the new Ruby Princess for next summer to the Med.  Since we'll hit some ports we've been to before, we'll be able to spend more time enjoying the ship.