Just returned, HAL's ms Rotterdam in the Baltics

Yep...in fact if you sail on one of the Silja line ships you'd see where
the interior promenade concept came from....they did it first!

Jeff


Karen wrote:

Many Europeans take land/sea vacations using the ferry systems this
way. Many European ship historians actually trace the basic cruise
ship standard back to the European ferry.

Karen

Jeff, that's exactly how I wish I had done it. Some of those ferries
look like cruise ships too and are small enough for the Stockholm
archipelago. I don't think the Star Princess can sale through most of
the archipelago.

andrew.


On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:37:57 GMT, Jeff wrote:

You can do a good bit of the baltics (eastern end at least) via ferry
boats, including overnights. That way you can book hotel rooms in these
countries and still have a nice "water portion" to your trip. That is
what we did in 1995. Very easy to get from Stockholm to Helsinki via
overnight ferry; there is at least one ferry line that does a 3 day to
St. Petersburg; you can take the fast boat to Tallinn from Helsinki in
about 1.5 hours, etc. So you can easily make up a nice 10 day vacation
and really see these places better! I keep thinking of doing this again
one of these days!

Jeff



Charles wrote:

In article , Buddy Romaine
wrote:


Actually, as a result of my experience in the Baltics, I really have
no desire to take cruises to intensive ports. In retrospect I wish we
had done a Norwegian Fjords cruise and saved the Baltic countries for
a land trip.


That is food for thought. I was thinking of doing a Baltic cruise next
year. You make some good points about port intensive cruises that do
multiple major cities like the Baltic itin. as opposed to the Norwegian
Fjords or Greek Isles.



Carnival Tropicale 1982
NCL Dawn 2004
HAL Noordam 2004
Rotterdam 2005

That is good information Karen. Where do you prefer to take your
cruises? And does anyone know if water/ferry transportation in the
Greek Islands is as efficient as it is in the Baltics?

andrew



On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:33:03 -0400, Karen Selwyn
wrote:

We did the Fjords area as a land trip, and we don't think we lost
anything from taking this approach. We stayed in Voss and took day trips
through the region. These day trips included several ferry trips along
the same fjords as those visited by the cruise ships. I'll confess that
Norwegian food isn't as sublime as Italian or French food, but we still
enjoyed eating the local cuisine.

We were also able to have the sort of unexpected experience that a
land-based vacation offers when there's no pressure from embarkation
time at the end of the port call. The National Hardanger Fiddle and Folk
Dance Competition was taking place in Voss during our visit. One night,
we went to the competition which turned out to be the men's fiddle
finals. Each contestant both played musical selections and gave an
introductory speech on any topic. All the speeches were in Norwegian,
but friendly folks sitting to our right and left amicably translated for
us. The contestants in native dress, their skill on the hardanger
fiddles, and the good will of our neighbors combined to create a special
memory.

Some readers may recognize the name Voss as the name of a sparkling
water in an elegantly designed bottle that has become quite popular. I'm
here to tell you that never once while we were in Voss were we offered
this sparkling water.

What I can report is that Voss is the extreme sports capital of Norway,
and we went white water rafting on a nearby river. Great fun!

Bottom line: Even the regions that might seem to be ideal for a cruise
experience can be seen as part of a land vacation if local cuisine,
interacting with the people, and a more in-depth approach are important
to you.

Karen Selwyn


Carnival Tropicale 1982
NCL Dawn 2004
HAL Noordam 2004
Rotterdam 2005

We are relatively new to cruising, so never knew anything but land trips
(during which we've also used ferries with great satisfaction). Now hooked
on cruising, we've incorporated a cruise in many of our land trips, like
this past trip--we did 5 days land on either side of the cruise. We've
enjoyed the combination. The biggest "plus" of the cruise portion of the
trip is that it gives you a little time off from the "work" associated with
finding hotels, meals, transport, etc. in a foreign place. The biggest
"negative" is what you've all pointed out, the fact that you only get a
taste of a place via cruise ship. HOWEVER, I will say that getting a taste
of a place before you invest a lot of time and money going there for an
extended land trip is not a bad thing at all. On this trip, for the first
time in all of my travels, I found some places I was delighted to see for
the few hours we were there. But that was enough.

The flip side happened to us last year in the Med--and it must have happened
to you, too, Buddy. Most of the ports were repeats of prior land visits for
us, so we didn't have to feel "cheated" about seeing them for just the day.
But Greece was new to us...and that one day's taste in those island ports
was definitely not enough! From everything I've heard, the Greek ferry
system is definitely the way to go, and I am ready to go back and do the
islands that way. (Another alternative perfectly suited for exploring the
Greek islands is yacht charter. But I don't know how many days in a row I
could spend on a small boat. I think I'd save up my personal "tolerance
quota" for that type of adventure and use it on a gulet charter on Turkey's
blue coast.)

Hopefully, Karen or Jeff or somebody will jump in and extol and explain
ferry-hopping in the Greek Isles for us. The only part of that idea I'm
having a hard time getting my hands around is which island group? There are
so many different clusters of islands, each with its own characteristics and
features.

Diana

"Buddy Romaine" wrote:
That is good information Karen. Where do you prefer to take your
cruises? And does anyone know if water/ferry transportation in the
Greek Islands is as efficient as it is in the Baltics?

andrew

Buddy Romaine wrote:
That is good information Karen. Where do you prefer to take your
cruises? And does anyone know if water/ferry transportation in the
Greek Islands is as efficient as it is in the Baltics?

We've taken two cruises that I'd call destination cruises: one to Alaska
and one through the Panama Canal south to Santiago, Chile. In both
cases, we either preceeded or extended our cruise with independent
travel. While we thoroughly enjoyed both those destination cruises, they
were ultimately less satsifying than the land vacations we take to see a
region in depth.

The rest of our cruises have been R & R cruises in the Caribbean in the
winter. (When we had to fill out applications for visas to Russia, we
had to list all the countries we had visited. The Caribbean islands
alone over-ran the lines alloted for identifying the countries.)
However, we have reached a crisis point in cruising.

We don't want to repeat the SUMMIT 10-day itinerary for a third time,
even though we love the itinerary, and, prior to sailing smaller Oceania
ship, this used to be our favorite ship. We don't want to repeat the
REGATTA 12-day itinerary for a third time, again, even though we love
the ship and the itinerary. While we book Concierge class cabins on
Celebrity or suites on Oceania, we're not inclined to spend the money on
a Crystal, SilverSeas, etc. cruise, and the new ships just haven't
generated any appeal for us.

Finally, and perhaps most important, we're not making enough progress
seeing the places that fascinate us when we devote one of our major
vacations to an R & R cruise in the Caribbean. This year, we're
experimenting with skipping a cruise completely. We're heading to Turkey
for 16 days in the spring and to Ireland for 14 days in the summer. The
Turkish trip is timed to coincide with a total solar eclipse, and we'll
be viewing the eclipse from a seaside resort hotel on the Med. My
husband and I hope to compensate for the skipped cruise by heading early
to Turkey; we hope that the temps will be mild enough to stretch out on
a lounge chair by the Med and rest up before launching into a demanding
tour of Turkey. Doesn't have to be swimming weather. We'll consider it a
victory if the weather is mild enough to sit outside, read, and watch
the water. Hmmmm. Sounds like something to do on a cruise.

Anyway, stay tuned. I'll report back on our cruise-less experiement.

Karen Selwyn

D Ball wrote:

We are relatively new to cruising, so never knew anything but land trips
(during which we've also used ferries with great satisfaction). Now hooked
on cruising, we've incorporated a cruise in many of our land trips, like
this past trip--we did 5 days land on either side of the cruise. We've
enjoyed the combination.

Absolutely. This is a nice way to balance the appeal of both types of
vacations. This works equally well when group land vacations. We
wouldn't dream of doing independent travel in Russia and China, but we
felt comfortable adding a couple of days on our own before and after in
Moscow/St. Petersburg and Beijing/Hong Kong.

The biggest "plus" of the cruise portion of the
trip is that it gives you a little time off from the "work" associated with
finding hotels, meals, transport, etc. in a foreign place.

We do much of the work in advance. We love the planning almost as much
as the trip, and we find that the trip itself offers enough spontaneous
decisions that we don't need to add hotels and transportation to the
mix. For example, we chose Assisi as our destination in Umbria because
it was centrally located for day trips and had a large number of
restaurants fo offer variety during our week-long stay. After having
been conditioned that August is the month in Italy during which
everything shuts down, we were shocked to discover that Assisi's down
time is July. We ended up eating a one restaurant once, and three
restaurants twice simply because most of the other restaurants had shut
down for a holiday. We ended up spending an unusual amount of time with
restaurant recommendations in our guidebooks and phoning to confirm the
restaurants weren't on vacation.

Hopefully, Karen or Jeff or somebody will jump in and extol and explain
ferry-hopping in the Greek Isles for us. The only part of that idea I'm
having a hard time getting my hands around is which island group? There are
so many different clusters of islands, each with its own characteristics and
features.

Greece is very high on our list, but my husband and I haven't been there
yet. I can't offer any first-hand information. However, in the process
of trying to find an active URL for the Fluggruten ferry we used for
cruising the Hardardanger fjord, I found a useful web site for all
Europe (URL below). There's information about Greece.

The Fylkesbaatane boat company, which we used to explore the Sognefjord
regio, has an English-language web site. (URL below) Click on the links
to "Tourist Itineraries," and, then "Day Excursions/Round Trips" and
have fun reading and dreaming. (You'll notice many of the routes have
Voss as a destination which explains why we made that our base of
operations for much of the trip.) One of our many fjord cruises was part
of the "Norway in a Nutshell" trip. By then, we had done enough fjord
cruises that the cruise portion was less exciting than the ride on the
Flam Railway. Highly recommended! We cruised the Hardanger fjord on the
Flaggruten ferry line.

Ferry for the Sognefjord http://www.fjord1.no/fylkesbaatane_en/
Ferries for Europe: http://www.backpackeurope.com/trans/ferry/

One last URL. We didn't use this company, but if the idea of a land
vacation is appealing but the thought of planning is unappealing, this
company's web site says all the right things! (Again, the name popped up
while I was Googling Flaggruten.)

http://www.fjord-tours.com/default.asp

Karen Selwyn

I haven't done the Greek islands by ferry, but I'd be game for it.
Although I'd aim for a more "off" month, like maybe June or September.
I'd try to stay out of the high high season when everything will be a
zoo. You can pretty much take Hellenic Seaways from Piraeus (port for
Athens) right to Santorini, but has stops along the way....so that could
be your route of exploration. The Santorini route includes Ios, Naxos,
Paros and Mykonos.

Here's a good link:

http://www.santorini.gr-santorini.co...hydrofoils.htm

It's so doable!

Jeff


D Ball wrote:

Hopefully, Karen or Jeff or somebody will jump in and extol and explain
ferry-hopping in the Greek Isles for us. The only part of that idea I'm
having a hard time getting my hands around is which island group? There are
so many different clusters of islands, each with its own characteristics and
features.

Diana

"Buddy Romaine" wrote:

That is good information Karen. Where do you prefer to take your
cruises? And does anyone know if water/ferry transportation in the
Greek Islands is as efficient as it is in the Baltics?

andrew

Oh that could be! I'll never forget sailing back into Helsinki from St.
Petersburg in the middle of the winter. It was beautiful.

Jeff



Buddy Romaine wrote:

Jeff, that's exactly how I wish I had done it. Some of those ferries
look like cruise ships too and are small enough for the Stockholm
archipelago. I don't think the Star Princess can sale through most of
the archipelago.

andrew.

Rotterdam 2005

Karen, I can't wait to hear your Turkey report. It is high on my list (for
independent exploration). We spent 8 days in mostly southwest Ireland in
June 2003. Are you going to self-drive? I can highly recommend
http://www.theaa.com , go to the Ireland section and create custom route
maps for each day's itinerary. Also, this is a nice online resource for
basic fact-gathering: http://www.ireland-withpatpreston.com/ I gather you
have flexibility in timing. Summer is ideal for the weather, but it also
brings crowds of tourists. We were pleased to beat the rush by arriving
early June. I recall the selection of a bed and breakfast was a big part of
my trip planning. I was especially pleased with two of my choices--one in
Ballyvaughan (I also have a great rec on a Burren walk guide) and the other
in Kenmare. If you find yourself going that direction and want the names for
your research base, shoot me an e.

Don't forget us back here at rtc! We are nicer than those rtE regulars.
just kidding

Diana

We do much of the work in advance. We love the planning almost as much as
the trip, and we find that the trip itself offers enough spontaneous

I didn't present my thought well, Karen. I simply meant to contrast the ease
with which you can go to breakfast, lunch, dinner and bed each day on a
cruise vs. on even the most well-researched land trip. There is no "work"
whatsoever involved in meeting those needs while cruising. -D