Tomorrow will be the 1st of June, so we're less than a month away from our next cruise adventure. This cruise will be 21 days long and is actually two cruises back-to-back. Here's the cruise itinerary:
- board the Holland America Motor Ship (MS) Ryndam in Dover, England on June 29th;
- a day at sea on June 30th;
- port visit to Copenhagen, Denmark on July ist, Canada Day;
- a day at sea on July 2nd;
- port visit to Tallinn, Estonia on July 3rd;
- port visit to St. Petersburg, Russia on July 4th;
- port visit to St. Petersburg continues on July 5th;
- port visit to Helsinki, Finland on July 6th;
- port visit to Stockholm on July 7th;
- port visit to Stockholm continues on July 8th;
- scenic cruising in the "Stockholm Archipelago" on departure from Stockholm on July 8th;
- port visit to Visby, Sweden on July 9th;
- port visit to Warnemunde, Germany on July 10th;
- a day at sea on July 11th;
- another day at sea on July 12th;
- port visit to Dover, England on July 13th, the end of the first cruise;
- a day at sea enroute to Norway on July 14th;
- port visit to Bergen, Norway on July 15th;
- port visit to Molde, Norway on July 16th;
- port visit to Flam, Norway on July 17th;
- scenic cruising in Sognefjord on departure from Flam, Norway on July 17th;
- port visit to Eidifjord, Norway on July 18th;
- scenic cruising in Hardangerfjord on departure from Eidifjord on July 18th;
- a day at sea returning to the UK on July 19th;
- disembark the ship at Dover on July 20th.
All the hotel, air travel bookings are made, as are the shore excursions. It looks like we'll have a very busy trip. Even though some of the stops are not new to us, we've got lots planned. Many of you know that in another life I was the Canadian Air Attaché to both Moscow and Helsinki. Peggy and I visited St. Petersburg (aka Leningrad in those days), Tallinn and Helsinki as part of our official travels. We visited Bergen, Norway during a cruise in 2012, so it is not new to us. Neither is Copenhagen, Denmark, which we both have visited in the past. All this familiarity may be why we decided not to cruise in the Baltic until now.
Our plan has us flying over to London, England on June 27th via Air Transat, a small Canadian airline. They offer what they call "Club Class" seating at a price very slightly higher than hospitality class seats on other airlines. Club class is very comparable to business class on most other airlines. Our flight lands in Gatwick at about 08:00 a.m. on June 28th. We then find our way down to Dover via London on British Rail. It takes about 3 hours to complete the journey. We're booked into the Best Western Plus Dover Marina Hotel and Spa. Sounds like a good place to unwind and adjust to European time zones before boarding the ship on June 29th.
We've done cruise logs for a number of our cruises, but we've never tried posting them to a blog address so that they can be seen and commented upon while we're progressing. We've always distributed the logs by e-mail. We'll see how this goes. We'll post as frequently as we can, keeping in mind that the internet on Holland America ships is both expensive and slow. We'll pick a few photos to post as well to give you an idea what we're seeing and what the weather is like.
