14 Day Baltic Sea Itinerary
Written: Aug 21 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Clean, excellent service, big cabins, good food, great spa. Baltic area is wonderful.
Cons: Food has deteriorated some over the years, rude front desk personnel, big ship, cheap art
The Bottom Line: The Infinity is so nice, with so much to do, that I really could spend a two week vacation just sailing around. The worst part? Having to go home.
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| masonbarge's Full Review: Celebrity Infinity |
My wife and I took the Infinity round trip from England through the Baltic Sea, May 10-24. We had previously sailed on the first Celebrity ship in this class, the Millennium. Our itinerary (omitting at sea days) was:
Harwich, England; Oslo; Stockholm; Helsinki; St. Petersburg (2 days); Talinn, Estonia; Warnemunde (Rostock) Germany; Copenhagen (2 days); Dover, England. We had a premium balcony cabin (Category 1C) which cost $2300 per person. Our tips ran about $140 each.
Embarkation at Harwich was only so-so. The lines were quite long and the train ride to Harwich from London was grubby. On the positive side, the train stopped right at the terminal and you could check your baggage, and we were able to board very early, around 12.00. Celebrity was thoughtful enough to have a buffet available at 12.00 in the Lido.
The Ship:
This is a beautiful ship, inside at least. (Outside it is rather ugly IMO, like a motor hotel on a hull, but this seems to be the current fad in cruise liners.) Decor is contemporary, as is the artwork. I noticed a distinct cutback in the art budget for the Infinity, compared to the Millennium, and I really didn't see much I liked.
The cabins are superb, very large and extremely well planned. The architect who designed them deserves a medal. There is plenty of storage space under the bed for suitcases and just the right amount of drawer space and hanging space for two weeks of luggage. The lighting is outstanding -- you can turn on bright lights overhead for good visibility, table lamps and side lights for a prettier, more intimate look, or a reading lamp over the bed to read without disturbing your partner. The bathroom has just the right amount of room, and is more comfortable overall than most standard cruiseline bathrooms I have used. Everything worked, too, and was spotless. Decor was a bit Danish modern for my usual taste, with blond wood and chrome, but I was very comfortable anyway.
The nicest thing about this class of ship is the wonderful "thallasoptherapy" area, which is free on Millie-class ships (older Celebrity ships charge for it). It has two hot salt water mini-spas, which are very hot, and a large salt water pool with underwater lounge-chairs made out of steel rollers, which keep your head just above water. You CANNOT stay tense after 10 minutes in these pools!
The service was excellent in the cabin, restaurant, and buffet. The only exception was the front desk. It is hard to imagine why Celebrity has people manning the front desk area who cannot speak good English, cannot answer questions, and are downright rude to passengers. The rest of the ship personnel were competent, friendly, and eager to be of assistance.
The food was excellent for this price range, but sadly, it has deteriorated since our last Celebrity trip. The bread is the exact same cold basket every night, and the salads, which used to be imaginative and varied, now consist almost solely of lettuce and dressing. They also have taken to dressing the main salad prior to serving it, although you can have a bare salad and a choice of dressing served at the table if you ask. The entrees were good to excellent, desserts good to excellent, and appetizers were outstanding -- really, the appetizers showed some of the old Celebrity flair.
Celebrity's dinner service is extremely elegant. The table is set with about 11 pieces of flatware, and often a very good string quintet will play. I have one bone to pick with them. Dinner is served in five courses and is just too long -- I wish they would combine the soup and salad courses to shorten dinner, which sometimes ran as long as 1 hour 45 minutes!
Breakfast in the dining room was yummy! The Eggs Benedict were my favorite -- the chef really knows how to cook eggs, and the hollandaise was delicious.
The Lido (I think they call it the Ocean Grill unlike most cruise lines) was just fair. The only cold drinks are lemonade or punch or water, served in tiny plastic juice glasses -- really awful. Coffee and tea were quite good, though, and there is always plenty of milk. The pizza and pasta specialty bar was okay, and the usual hamburger and hotdog service was good.
The great surprise was the "light fare" health menu at the back of the pool area. Outstanding! Really gourmet quality lunch (including the delicious desserts), even if you have to order two of everything to fill up :)
The casino is well run. Celebrity, unlike many cruise ships, will let you obtain cash without a surcharge at the casino window, up to something like $1000 per day.
Destinations:
Oslo was beautiful and fun. I especially enjoyed the outdoor folk museum, which has imported and rebuilt buildings from various eras of Norwegian history, including a real stave church. The average citizen of Oslo, as far as I can tell, speaks better English than the average citizen of a large US city. Good food, great day.
Stockholm is, in my opinion, the most beautiful city in the world. Small, charming, clean, safe -- but expensive. Even the food is good.
We were so completely worn out when we got to Helsinki that we took a quick two hour tour of it (on foot), then went back to the ship and crashed. It seemed like a place you would want to live, although not quite as beautiful as the first two we visited. Very very nice.
St. Petersburg is phenomenal. You must visit it. We hired a car, driver, and guide through Red October, which we shared with another couple. Total cost was about $125 per person per day, and it was a really good deal. Our guide knew everything -- she was a Professor of English from St. Petersburg University, if you can imagine. We visited a number of small sights, with long stops at the Hermitage and Peterhof, the palace of Peter the Great. Peterhof is outside the city, and the drive past mammoth Soviet-era apartments and decayed buildings was interesting in itself. We had a sandwiches at the Hermitage cafe the first day, which were very good, and a big Russian lunch at the Restaurant 1913 the second day, which was out of this world for @ $20-25 per person. They served me, believe it or not, the best cup of cappucino I have ever had, and I've spent a lot of time in Italy and France.
Talinn is a great tourist destination. The Estonians have pretty much dedicated the "old town" to tourism, and have restored and pedestrianized it quite well. I simply don't have time, in this review, to do a complete travelogue of each city, but I have to say, the 13th century monastery I visited, lit only by candlelight, was one of the most remarkable places I have ever been.
Our best day was probably in Rostock, where we decided to take the train to Schwerinn, the ancient capital of the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Someone we met on the train explained to us that the reason East Germany is so charming, is that the Soviet-allied East Germans did not build any new buildings. After unification, instead of building new monstrosities, they have restored all of the old structures. Schwerinn is a delightful town, with a large lake with grassy banks in the center, a nice pedestrianized old town, and a castle that would make Disneyland jealous for sheer gingerbread. A wonderful place to visit.
Copenhagen -- I have about run out of superlatives. Copenhagen is much larger, busier, noisier, more sophisticated, and more crowded than any of the other cities in Scandanavia, but it is a wonderful place to visit.
People were quite friendly, although, as one might expect, less so in the largest cities (St. Petersburg and Copenhagen). We asked a German man who was waiting for a bus, in Rostock, for directions to the train to Schwerinn. Even though he spoke no English, he left his bus stop and walked us to the correct platform inside the train station. A very large percentage of people spoke English, except in Russia and Germany.
This cruise gets 10 out of 10, overall, even though it wasn't perfect. In the Finland/Russia leg, the sun didn't set until around 11 at night! It is chilly in May, and we had some real rain on two days and alternating sun and drizzle on others, but the advantage to being there in May is that the tourist crowds are quite small.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
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Epinions.com ID:
masonbarge
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Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 0 members
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