Two more sleeps to go until we fly out to Helsinki! Then, 12 nights cruising to small ports and islands. Starting in the Gulf of Bothnia, then we head down through the Baltic Sea, and the Kiel Canal to end in Hamburg.
 
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Greetings Cruise Critic strangers! I’m a longtime lurker on these boards (18+ years!), but finally have enough spunk to post my first ever Cruise Critic trip report!
 
Some of my preliminary research was done via TripAdvisor, so my first few lines below are essentially a re-post of what I originally posted there in anticipation of this trip. It’ll give you a nice summary of our initial preparations. Our travel officially kicks-off next week, as we’ve included an 8-night road trip through Alaska in advance of our cruise.
 
I thought I was writing my trip reports for my son (who turned 13 just a few days ago), but I suppose they’re really for me. He’s growing up so fast & time seems to be slipping away. Sigh.
 
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It has been awhile since I have posted a live and this will be a new kind of trip for us so I thought I might as well give it a go! I am excited to be doing a European cruise for the 1st time which will be kicked off with some land travels!  Be prepared for me to get into the weeds a bit while I am discussing planning 🤣
 
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Ok, I admit I have a poor track record for sticking to posting daily for live reviews, but I will really try this time! We are a couple with three teenagers staying in 18019 in the Yacht Club on the MSC Seascape. This is our 5th MSC cruise and 4th in the YC. We know what to expect with MSC - the good and the bad - and we love the overall experience.
We had to fly out the morning of embarkation, which was stressful and pretty tiring. It just couldn't be helped this time. We walked up to the white YC tents at Terminal C and were quickly brought up with a few other families to the YC waiting area. This is not a fancy waiting room, but there was plenty of space to sit and we only waited about 10 minutes total. It was busy, but it seemed like they had a process going to quickly get people checked in with their wristbands and turn in paperwork. A butler came down and took a small group of us up to the YC.

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Hi! I’m incredibly excited to be one week out from our first-ever cruise. We’re flying to Copenhagen on Monday June 5 and boarding the Nieuw Statendam on the 8th for a 10-day Baltic Sea cruise. It looks like the cruise is fully sold out, so we’ll see what the crowds are like. 

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“There’s two types of people: Greeks and everybody else who wishes they was Greek” - Gus Portokalos
Good evening, Cruise Critic! I’m interrupting all the other European lives to start my own. Join me as we fly to Athens and embark on the new-ish Resilient Lady calling on Santorini, Rhodes, Bodrum and Mykonos (for an overnight), then back to Athens for 2 days and a long layover in London. 

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This will be our 10th sailing on Miss Allure and once again enjoying a CLS. 

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Has been a wild and crazy year so far. So this is our cruise to relax, lay back and just  go with the flow. Minimal planning, few excursions.  Just taking our time. 
 

 
We were surprised when Allure was relocated to a new port …… but I guess RCI had to pick a ship to go and as a groupie we too shall follow. 
 

 
To begin with, this is our casino comped cruise and we booked it almost a year ago. Also we were able to upgrade to a CLS for a nominal fee. ( yup pre-paid the cruise to the casino slot machines). Then the cost of all cabins really soared. We were sticker shocked at some of the rates.  But happy we were locked in. 
 
So over the years, you win some and lose some. Here was one of more memorable winnings. 
 

 
 
So as the last few days of preparations are undertaken, packing and organizing being the most important, I better get moving so I will be ready. 
 

So wish me luck as I get my act together. 

And updates as well as “SUEISMS” could be posted at any time. 
 
So for now………SEA YOU😃

This is cruise #22.
 
 

that should about cover it.

In 2 days we take off for Barcelona, where on Monday we will board the Carnival Venezia for its maiden TransAtlantic voyage to it’s New York home port! Well, its maiden voyage as a Carnival branded ship, since as many of you know the ship was originally a Costa ship for the Asian market, which didn’t work out so well because of the pandemic.

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Today is THE BIG DAY!!!!  We are leaving for our big European adventure to Barcelona, Gibraltar, Lisbon, Vigo, Leixos, La Coruna, Bilbao, Bordeaux, Mont St. Michel, Brussels/Ghent, Dover, Cambridge, and London.  We will be covering 5 countries in 2 weeks 5 days.  Here is our Itinerary.  I will be updating this thread with pictures from our journey as we take it along with any tips and tricks I have and my opinions on the "renovated" Pride. 

I'm leaving tomorrow and I'm going to try to report live if it works. I'm sailing with my daughter but we have our own cabins.  That's a first for me.  We did this cruise in July but unfortunately my husband passed away unexpectedly the week before we left so that cruise is kind of a blur. If anyone has any questions let me know.

We're long time 5 star cruisers on HAL and decided to try Princess for a cruise through the UK.  I'll be doing one of my Almost Live threads with pictures and commentary about our time on the ship and the itinerary.  For the most part we are planning to self explore in the ports we are visiting as we've visited many of them via our motorcycle.  We're leaving Seattle on 5/28 and plan to spend a few days in Southampton pre-cruise and after the cruise we've booked 4 nights on a canal boat near the London theater district (we have reservations for 3 musicals in the West End area). Feel free to post questions and I'll try to give an honest answer.  We travel in inside cabins, so that'll be our perspective.  There are only 2 sea days on this 12 day cruise. Two of my favorite cruise vloggers are on this cruise and I look forward to meeting them.

School is out for summer where we live so it is time for a vacation and another cruise! 
 
We booked this one in early December 2022 when we planned to take our son and his fiancée as we love being with our family. We have four other adult kids and will try to plan cruise or land vacations with each of them as it fits into our schedules. A few weeks ago, our daughter realized there weren't any available summer camps for her daughter/our granddaughter so we offered to bring her with us. Our granddaughter cruised with us about five years ago when she was 3 years old on the  NCL Dawn but was too young to remember it. This time, she will be turning 8 years old a few days after the cruise ends so we will celebrate it all week!

This is somewhere around my 35th cruise.  Been on RCL, NCL, X, Princess and Carnival.  I don't really have a favorite but the bulk of my experience is with NCL and RCL.  So this is my first HAL cruise.  Read and saw a lot about it so I was looking forward to a more premium experience.  We are both in our mid-40s, together for 9 years, live in Florida and we are both retired although I'm not a travel blogger but I wouldn't consider that a job, more of a fun hobby.  My reviews are a little different I guess because I talk about the good and the bad.  Some of it may sound like nitpicking or that I'm difficult but I'm actually really easy going.  Some issues are more important to others so I just like to put it all out there.  I'm sure plenty of people on this same cruise would disagree with my opinions so take them as just one of many data points.  With that out of the way....

Hello from MSC Seaside

We recently cruised on Seascape (March Spring Break) and we are now on Seaside.  I will do some comparisons between the ships, with Seascape fresh in mind.  We were also on Seaside exactly 4 years ago, so I look forward to seeing what may have changed.  To date, Seaside is our favorite ship.  Will this still ring true after this cruise?  We will know in 11 days 😄 We are booked on the 7+4 back to back sailing.

We are in our hotel, Laguadia Plaza, and it was nice and clean. We got in about 8:30 last night. Caught to shuttle to the hotel pretty easily and we ordered Chinese food through Uber eats and it was pretty good.
The Meraviligia was running late last night about three hours however they made up about 2 hours and docked at 7:15 this morning. We are getting dressed and heading to breakfast and plan to catch a ride with a new Tesla rideshare called Revel. When you download the app you get 50% off your first ride within 72 hours of account setup. We had some friends use that yesterday and it worked well. 

Greetings from the River Princess presently docked in Vienna. I will try to post along the way and hopefully give a full report after we get home.
Overnight flight left on time and arrived 10 minutes ahead of schedule.  Bags were coming off the carousel as we walked up to it.  So far air travel reminds me how it used to be a few decades ago.  A good start to our vacation.

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I will be traveling on HAL for the first time on the Nieuw Amsterdam. I have cruised before with NCL. My goal is to do a live review from the Nieuw Amsterdam beginning with my very long day of travel from Pennsylvania to Anchorage. Oh, what an adventure it will be. I am going to also share my experiences up until cruise day as there has already been several interesting issues.

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I have today boarded the MSC Virtuosa for the 7 night Norwegian Fjords cruise. I’ll try and provide a few updates across the week. If anyone has any particular questions let me know. 
 
We were booked in an Ocean view cabin. We bid for an upgrade to a Balcony cabin through the MSC upgrade programme (minimum bid was £65pp, we bid £105pp in the end). We have an end of a block cabin on floor 12 so have a huge balcony, albeit with just the usual two chairs and not really table table. We are still pleased as it is a lot less than we would have paid to book it originally. 

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