Mtngirl

My friend and myself booked with "ULKO Tours" for one day private tour in St. Petersburg last year. Our tour guide "Julia" and driver "Dmitry" took us to where we wanted to go. The Hermitage was closed on Monday that we were there so we chose Catherine's Palace, Fabrege Museum and Church of Spilled Blood. Wonderful tours. Would highly recommend them. Their website is http://www.ulkotours.com. They met us at the cruise port on time.

I have used "insuremytrip" and I also purchase insurance through my travel agent. I broke my ankle in Sicily while on a cruise and was in the hospital for 6 nights and never received a statement/invoice from the Dr. or hospital. I had travel insurance and the insurance had a flight paramedic from Berlin to come and fly with me back to USA and assist me as I was in wheel chair during all this. The insurance took care of my flight. I always get travel insurance. You never know when something can happen as happened with me.

Thank you! I will let Kurt know about your kind words. He also writes music and has a you tube channel under the name of Skyway Spirit. He is very grateful to be going into his second contract with NCL. He is extremely excited about spending all that time in Europe as well as rocking the Getaway!

I have enjoyed your posts on your son. We will be boarding the Getaway Aug. 24, 2017 in Copenhagen and have reservations for the Million Dollar Quartet on Aug. 29th at 10:15 p.m. showing. Looking forward to the show.

That explains your user name of Mountain Girl. =) Have fun on your cruise - you're going to love it!

Thank you. We are getting all of our tour tickets together and visa's for our tours in St. Petersburg. I'm traveling with a former co-worker who lives in Marietta. If we have any questions, can we email you? My email is colwellsl@yahoo.com.

Our last port was Stockholm. We had been nervously checking the portsofstockholm website every day, because none of the previous Getaway cruises had actually docked in Stockholm. Some cruises that were originally scheduled for Stockholm got switched to Nynashamn instead, which is about an hour's ride away. We were so excited when the captain announced the night before what time we would be arriving in the archipelago. We knew then that we were definitely docking in Stockholm!

 

It takes several hours to sail through the archipelago, and it is beautiful! It reminded me very much of cruising through Alaska. If you don't want to get up early enough to see it in the morning, wait until the evening when you sail back through it again. We made sure not to make any show or dinner reservations that night so that we could watch to our heart's content.

 

We planned to do Stockholm on our own, using the HOHO boat as transportation. For those planning to use the HOHO boat, following the painted lines on the pavement. Once you're outside the port gates, the lines will lead you left to the water. There are people right there at the HOHO boat stop selling tickets, and you can use credit cards. We made sure to disembark ASAP, and we were on the very first boat that left around 8:20 or so. For those wondering (like I was), the boat goes directly between Stadsgarden and the Vasa Museum (and I think one other stop) until 10:00 a.m., then at 10 it begins its usual clockwise route. During my pre-trip research, I was getting conflicting info on whether or not the boat would go straight to the Vasa. So I finally emailed them to ask, and even they told me that it would not go straight to the Vasa and that we would have to do the whole clockwise route to get there. Like so many things, you get different answers from different people. But I can assure you it goes directly to the Vasa until 10:00. It's a great, quick way to get to the Vasa Museum. We got there at about 8:35 and there was hardly anyone there. We bought our tickets with no wait and went right in. We were able to take unobstructed pictures to our heart's content. When we left the museum around 9:45, the museum was quite crowded. We were glad we got there early!

 

For those who want to use the HOHO buses instead of the boats (which you may want to do if you want to go straight to Gamla Stan before 10 a.m.), I noticed there were 2 parked right outside the port gates waiting for passengers to disembark the ship.

 

After the Vasa, we went to the Abba Museum. It's not right along the shoreline like the Vasa, so be sure to ask for directions. By the time we finished at the Abba Museum, it was after 10:00, so we boarded the HOHO boat and took the clockwise ride to Gamla Stan where we finished our day.

 

Stockholm is a beautiful city, and 8 hours isn't nearly enough time!

Thank you for your posts. I have enjoyed each one. We will be doing this Baltic cruise on Getaway August 23rd. I see you're in Lawrenceville. I'm up in Ellijay, Ga.

I will be taking the same cruise in August. I have truly enjoyed your posts and have learned a lot. I check each day for your posts. Thank you for sharing.(y)

Thank you for all the information. We will be sailing on the Getaway in August. Your posts have been so helpful and full of information.