Norway Winter, 25th February 2013

This was only our second cruise experience which turned out to be a very pleasant experience with a comfortable cabin and very friendly and helpful staff. The experiences offered by the ship when at sea were diverse and excellent as were the evening entertainment packages. Even the feelings brought by Force 10 gales were memorable and part of luck of the cruise, even if we did miss our visit to Sweden. On the other hand we were fortuitous with the weather on some of the port visits. Oslo, Turku, St Petersburg and Copenhagen. What was frustrating was that we seemed to be visiting ports on the wrong days. E.G. Turku on Sunday when very little was open; Helsinki on Monday when ALL museums were closed. St. Petersburg was beautiful but the visit to the Hermitage was slightly disappointing as we were restricted to artworks only of which very little was Russian. This seemed to be due to the fact that the scripts read by our guides was limited to those areas when we would also have liked to have seen artefacts from a broader spectrum. We returned home very relaxed after our 12 days having thoroughly enjoyed our holiday.