A warning before you start; this blog post is long!! If you don’t want to read the whole thing, there are links below that will jump you to the specific locations we visited.
After falling in love with cruising after our cruise to the Norwegian Fjords in 2023, we decided to book another one.
If you don’t know by now, my ultimate bucket list item is to tick off every single country. This cruise ticked off 5!
I booked the cruise through my travel company Lisa Craddock Experience It Now Travel. If you want to book the same cruise, or another holiday, please get in touch via the Facebook page.
Our cruise was sailing out of Southampton, which is very easy to get to from South Wales. We always like to travel up the night before we travel and this time was no different.
We stayed in the Holiday Inn, and booked their cruise and stay package. This included a night’s stay in a family suite. It also covered breakfast and a taxi to the port in the morning. Our car was covered to park in their carpark for the duration of the holiday.
The only thing it didn’t cover was the taxi back to the hotel from the port. However, we took a taxi straight from the port which only cost £28 and a 10 minute wait.
The room we had was a family suite, which consisted of two separate bedrooms (perfect when sharing with teens!) and a bathroom with both a bath and a shower.
For a cruise booking you are given an arrival time at port and ours was 12:30pm.
We arrived slightly earlier and after dropping the luggage off, we were allowed through security and onto the boat. We went straight to one of the bars, with a drink in hand by 1:30pm. Perfect!
Our cabin was ready by 2:30pm, so when we arrived at our room, our luggage was already waiting outside the door for us.
On our Norwegian cruise we opted for the cheapest option which was an inside cabin.
This time we opted for a balcony cabin. We had 2 twin beds on the floor plus 2 beds that come down from the ceiling (for the kids). The beds can only be moved by the crew, as there is a master key that locks and unlocks them into place. It was a little cosier that I was expecting for 2 adults and 2 teens, but we managed. I would worry that the boys would be too big for the beds on future cruises, but they did us well for this trip. All the staff ask is that you use the magnetic sticker for the door to let them know when you are in/out of the cabin, so they can come and make up/take down the beds when you are out, to allow you privacy whilst using the cabin.
You can see from the last two photos above, the compartments that the two beds were stored in, up out of the way during the daytime.
On the first evening, the crew took part in a ‘sail-away’ party up on the lido deck (deck 16), which was a great first opportunity to embarrass the boys while singing and dancing away, before enjoying a walk around the ships upper decks and enjoying the sunshine.
After this and some dinner, we headed to the theatre, where they were showing the new Wicked film.
Our itinerary for the cruise was as follows;
Friday – Embark the Britannia
Saturday and Sunday – 2 x sea days
Monday – 1st port of call. Kiel, Germany.
Tuesday – Sea day
Wednesday – 2nd port of call. Helsinki, Finland.
Thursday – 3rd port of call. Tallinn, Estonia.
Friday – 4th port of call. Stockholm, Sweden.
Saturday – 5th port of call. Visby, Sweden.
Sunday – Sea day
Monday – 6th port of call. Copenhagen, Denmark – staying overnight in port
Tuesday – Copenhagen, Denmark
Wednesday & Thursday – 2 x sea days
Friday – Arrive back to Southampton early morning (6am)
For the days at sea, and the evenings after a day off the ship, there are so many different things to do, and entertainment to see. You cannot get bored!
Our first 2 sea days were spent roaming the ship, getting our bearings and checking out everything the ship has to offer.
Some key features of the ship;
- cinema
- sports deck for football or basketball
- a small golf driving range
- a gym
- a running/walking track around the upper decks
- 4 swimming pools
- jacuzzi’s
- several different bars and a pub which showed sports all day everyday (great for watching the British F1 race on!)
- headliners theatre – there were shows on almost every single night!
- shops – clothes, jewellery, watches, duty free – lots of choice if shopping is your thing
- specialty restaurants (additional charge for some)
- table tennis
- shuffleboard games
I’m sure there’s some I’ve missed, there is so much choice, but here are a few photos showing some of the things we got up too and some of the shows we saw!
1st port of call; Kiel, Germany.
I’ll start off with saying, Kiel was our least favourite stop. For us, there wasn’t an awful lot to do there and as we arrived there on a Monday, lots of the museums and places of interest were closed.
We don’t usually book excursions that take us away from where we’ve docked as we like to explore that area, but after being there, I wish we’d booked the day trip to Hamburg excursion.
We did have a wander around the town centre and managed to buy some souvenirs. After this, we walked over to the Botanical Gardens, before heading to the Aquarium. Both were small and didn’t take a long time to explore. As we came out of the aquarium, it started to pour with rain (we got soaked!), so we hopped on a public bus. The boys wanted to head to the local football stadium to get some photos. It wasn’t open for visitors, but they were able to peek into the ground and get some photos from outside.
Once we’d finished there, we hopped back on the local bus and headed back to the ship earlier than planned.
2nd port of call; Helsinki, Finland.
In comparison to Kiel, there were so many things to do in Helsinki. We couldn’t do them all in a day, so we will be planning a weekend to go back there and see some of the things we missed. Although, we did still manage to see quite a lot considering we only there for a day!
When we arrived in the city (via a shuttle bus from the port), there were lots of little market stalls; food, drinks and local artists selling their homemade crafts (of course I had to buy a homemade Christmas bauble at add to our collection!). This was the perfect location to hold a market, along the front, next to the Old Market Hall. We bought some gorgeous strawberries from the market too.
From here, we hopped on a tram to Linnanmaki theme park. This was a great few hours out, and you could genuinely spend the whole day here. You could book this as one of the excursions with P&O, but we DIY’ed it. We hopped on a public tram which took us right outside the park and bought the tickets at the gate. Very easy public tram system to navigate and was cheap at approx £2pp.
I would definitely recommend arriving at the park early and heading straight to the big coasters, as by the time we were leaving, the queues for the big rides were approaching 60-80 minutes long.
From Linnanmaki, we took a walk around the back of the theme park and headed straight to the Olympic stadium & Football stadium, passing through some lovely green space and some artwork too. The stadiums were next to each other and there was a children’s tournament on when we visited, with countries entering from all over the world (safe to say the boys wanted to stay and watch part of a match!!).
From the stadium, we wandered over to see the Sibelius monument, in Sibelius park. There is lots of seating here and there were some vendors selling fresh fruit and juices. Lovely spot to sit and enjoy the quiet.
From here we jumped back on the tram and headed to Senate Square to see Helsinki Cathedral.
For such a busy square, we still managed to find some space to sit in a quaint little pop up bar, serving drinks and some snacks right in the square. It was lovely to take some time, to sit and enjoy and watch the world go by for a while. The boys had a lovely snack of waffles and strawberries with cream.
After spending way too much time people watching, we wandered back towards the waterfront and spent some time wandering along the front, admiring Uspenski Cathedral.
We ended the day by taking a ride on the big wheel at the waterfront, which gave some beautiful views over the city before heading to catch our shuttle bus back to the ship.
3rd port of call; Tallinn, Estonia.
Tallinn, an underrated stop on this trip I would say!
I really enjoyed wandering around here. The Old-Town is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And I loved seeing the ‘new’ mixed in with the old.
Our only plan in Tallinn was to wander around the town. It was so beautiful. The boys really didn’t appreciate me stopping every few minutes to take yet another photo! It’s a close call between here and Visby of where I took the most photos! (If you don’t like looking at photos of buildings, you can skip straight over this section!)
We wandered slightly outside the old town initially and came across a park/green space. It had a little river flowing through it and it was lovely watching some ducklings on the river bank. We also came across an outdoor gym, which the boys enjoyed. The only advice I would give you about the park area – DO NOT use the portaloo toilets that are dotted around!
From the park we came across the back of Toompea Castle. From here, we followed the path up and arrived at the castle and the Kuberneriaed (Governor’s garden in English), known as Toompea castle garden.
Next to Toompea Castle is The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral of Tallinn is an Eastern Orthodox cathedral in central Tallinn, built on Toompea Hill. I am not religious in the slightest, but I could not help but admire the beautiful architecture. You are allowed to enter the Cathedral, to admire it and to light a candle for loved ones, which we did.
Not far from the Castle and Cathedral, through a few winding streets is a famous viewpoint. This gives you a gorgeous view over the old town. If your looking for a new Instagram picture, here’s your chance! At the viewpoint there was also a man playing music and a stall selling fresh fruit and juice.
From here, we wandered back down towards the main square of the old town and stopped for some lunch in an Italian restaurant. The owner was Italian, which gave me a small opportunity to attempt to practice my very basic Italian knowledge! The food was absolutely amazing, and they serve huge portions, I would highly recommend eating here during your visit. (I cannot believe I didn’t take photos of our amazing food!).
After lunch we decided to visit the KGB prison cells. This was quite a somber experience. The exhibition they have created really gives you a small sense of how horrifying it would have been for the prisoners here. There is a heavy feeling that hangs in the air there. If you like history, I would definitely recommend paying this a visit.
From here, we continued the rest of the afternoon by just wandering through the streets, admiring the architecture, cobbled floors and green spaces.
4th port of call – Stockholm, Sweden.
The first thing I will say about Stockholm, is the way we got there on the ship, was just stunning! We sailed through the Stockholm Archipelago – which is made of 30,000 islands. Perfect scenery to make use of our balcony, as we were able to admire it on the way in and the way out 🙂
It is beyond beautiful and my photo’s do not do it justice in the slightest!
As we pulled up in port, the first thing we could see from the ship was Gronalund, the theme park, so of course, that’s where we headed. Although, we did stop off at Vasa Museum first!
Vasa Museum is dedicated to the Vasa ship, which when completed, was 69 metres long and more than 50 metres tall from the keel to the top of the main mast. The ship weighed over 1200 tonnes once outfitted with ten sails, 64 cannons, 120 tonnes of ballast and hundreds of sculptures. After taking years to build, the ship was laying on the sea bed 32 metres below, within minutes of it being launched.
The museum is really interesting; tells the full story from the ideas to the build to the current day. There were loads of exhibits including videos and interactive pieces. It has replicas of the ornate detailing around the ship which are all painted with the colours they understand to have been used at the time.
From here, we continued walking along the waterfront and made our way to Gronalund. Along the way we passed other museums and some outside art exhibitions. I would definitely love to come back and spend some time here as there was so much to do!
Again, we DIY’ed this excursion, so we bought our tickets on the machine outside. The park was really quiet first thing, so we managed to get on some of the big coasters straight away and stayed on them twice, before having to get off as small queues were gathering. (After 2 straight upside coasters, I was glad to go on a much smaller kids ghost train; for my benefit not the boys!!).
This park seemed a lot smaller than Linnanmaki, the rides seemed much closer and some of them were almost intertwined, but it still felt quiet. Perfect for us, and as it was so quiet, we were able to tick off most of the rides.
Before we left the park we did eat at the burger place; Hekto – Pontonen. They offered both meat and vegan burgers so we could all eat here easily, and they were absolutely delicious! None of us left a crumb!
From Gronalund, we caught a taxi back to the City where we saw the Opera House, City Hall, the Royal Palace just to name a few buildings.
Again, I definitely don’t think we had enough time in Stockholm to really explore it properly, so I would definitely head back for a weekend trip in the future to explore more of the city.
5th port of call – Visby, Sweden. (Situated on the island of Gotland).
Well, Visby. If it didn’t get so cold here in the winter months, I would consider moving here. It was absolutely gorgeous. Definitely my favourite stop of the holiday.
On the way into port, the weather looked awful. It was really foggy, we could barely see a thing from the balcony. Not ideal when we’d planned to do a bike ride out to the nature reserve. Thankfully, as we docked, the weather cleared up and it turned out to be a lovely day weather wise.
From the port, we walked approx 1.5kms to collect our bikes from Gotlands Cykeluthyrning, which we’d booked via their website. Originally online we booked 4 mountain bikes, as the sizing for some of the other bikes wasn’t available and I was unsure if I’d fit on one of the bikes I wanted (I have very short legs and was worried about the bike being too tall!).
When we arrived, they allowed me to try the bike I actually wanted and I was tall enough for their smallest size bike (kids bike!) so they allowed me to swap the bike on our booking and even refunded the slight difference in price. Their customer service was brilliant.
So, here’s the bike of dreams!
From the hire centre we headed towards the nature reserve. Minus the big hill which was difficult on a bike with 3 gears, it was so easy! Like lots of Europe, there are cycle paths everywhere, so this took the worry out of cycling on the roads. Lots of the path was along the coast, so the views out to sea were amazing. Of course, there were lots of stops along the way for photos.
After spending some time enjoying the scenery, we rode back towards the town for some lunch and found this lovely restaurant on the hill.
After lunch, we did more exploring. Since 1995 Visby has been on the UNESCO World Heritage Site. There’s an old town wall which is over 2 miles long, and lots of churches and ruins to explore. It was such a lovely ride around the town and around the town wall (and much quieter outside the wall).
After cycling a total of 15 miles across the day, we decided to drop the bikes back and grab some drinks and snacks at a pub along the front. They do an amazing mojito! Perfect to help unwind after a lovely day.
After 4 back to back days at different ports, we got to enjoy 1 sea day, before our 6th and final stop of the cruise. We spent our sea days enjoying the different activities, watching more shows and eating some delicious food!
6th port of call – Copenhagen, Denmark.
For our final port, we actually had 2 days here. One full day, an overnight and a second full day. This was much better than having just 1 day. It meant we could stay out much later in the evening, rather than be back on the ship by 5pm-6pm (depending on port).
Day 1 – As we had the 2 days here, we decided to book a hop-on hop-off bus. We did this at the port once we left the boat, they had a stand straight outside. From the port, the bus would start and cover the full route, but on return, you had to go to stop 12, where you’d pick up a shuttle bus back to the boat terminal – this is just to save other passengers having to go all the way to port, when they are not on the cruise.
For the first day we wanted to spend the majority of the day in Tivoli Gardens, but as it didn’t open until 11am, we stopped off at a few other places on the way, including the Lego shop which is next to one of the entrances.
Tivoli Gardens gives you choice when entering. You can either pay for park entrance only, or you can buy a pass for rides alongside the entrance which is what we opted for. If however there was only 1 or 2 rides you wanted to try, there are machines dotted around the park where you can buy credits for a specific ride – good option if you are on a budget. And even if you don’t like rides, the gardens themselves are worth a visit, the grounds are beautiful.
After a wander around and plenty of rides, we headed to The Anarkist for lunch. You can access this as part of the park, but you can also access this from street level without having to enter the park. We would highly recommend paying them a visit, as the food was delicious! They also offered vegan options which meant we could all eat at the same place, and the craft beers were beautiful.
While lunch settled, we spent some more time wandering the gardens, before heading on some more rides.
As the afternoon went on, the park become busier, so we decided to leave to have a look around the rest of the local area, before returning for the illuminations at the park later in the evening. You are allowed to re-enter on the same day providing you get a stamp – so please don’t forget to get these!
While out, we also had some dinner in a lovely little restaurant, which ended up being a tapas style dinner – again, would highly recommend this place!
After some dinner we returned to the park for the illuminations. As this was so late, the hop-on hop-off buses had actually finished for the evening, so we ended up getting a taxi back to the ship, which cost approx £25.
Day 2 – For our second and final day in Copenhagen, we decided to get up early and straight to Nyhavn. This is where the famous colourful houses along the canal are located. Even though it was early, there were already hundreds of people there, so bare this in mind!
After a few photos, we booked a cruise along the canal – this was done at the canal. We paid £21 for all 4 of us to do the canal trip – absolute bargain!! All you need to do is queue for a ticket, and then queue to join the boat. It was quite a big boat, lots of people and there was a tour guide advising us about the areas as we passed by. We didn’t have to wait long at all, 20 minutes max until we got on the next available boat. It was so worth it!
After the boat trip, we had more photos by the houses (sorry not sorry!).
We then headed across the harbour bridge towards Broens Street Food Market. There was loads of choice for different types of food – something for everyone! Lovely views over the water, and there were loads of tables and a choice to sit in the sun or under some shade (which we chose as it was boiling!).
From here, we walked back towards Nyhavn and picked up the hop-on hop-off bus to explore some of the other sights we had in mind, including the Kastellet fortress and the little mermaid statue.
After a jam packed 2 days, we headed back to the ship early evening for some dinner and a show.
Oh, and the little mermaid, here’s an ‘insta vs reality’ of the statue. We originally saw the back of the statue from the canal cruise we went on earlier in the day – and at that point decided not to visit it due to how busy it was there. As it happens, our hop-on hop-off pass required us to get the shuttle back to the ship from that statue stop, so we had to see it as we were there. It was still total chaos, but did manage to get a picture!
The final 2 days on board were full sea days whilst we made our way back towards Southampton where we would be docking early morning (6am on the Friday). Once again, we really did make the most of enjoying the things the ship has to offer; pool, swimming, golf, shows, art gallery etc – the list goes on and on!
Unfortunately, the day came where we had to disembark the ship and go back to reality!
Friday- arrive back to Southampton early morning (6am) – We chose to disembark ourselves and were off the ship by 7:30am.
If you would prefer help, or are unable to disembark the cruise on your own, you just have to pop your luggage outside your room the night before, and the crew will ensure it’s taken off the ship for you, and waiting for you in the huge luggage room at port – they will then give you a slot for you to disembark.
Within 10 mins of leaving the ship we were in a taxi on the way back to the hotel to collect our car from the Holiday Inn carpark. They don’t require you to leave your keys, so we unloaded the taxi, loaded the car and started to head home.
As we were so early in the day, we popped in to visit family on the way and spend some time with them, sharing our holiday details, which was a great way to spend the day.
Before I knew it, it was Monday morning 6am and the alarm was going off for work. Why is the early alarm so much easier to get up for when you are on holiday?!
If you’d like more information about any of the destinations visited, or want to book your own cruise or holiday, please either comment on this blog, or you can contact me via my page Lisa Craddock Experience It Now Travel.
The Travel Nut 