Baltic Cruise – Trip Notes and Itinerary

The seed for this cruise was planted by a single postcard – a postcard sent to my wife and I by our Personal Vacation Planner (PVP). (Thanks, Valerie!). The card promoted a few Carnival Cruise Line sailings, one of which included this Baltic cruise. One of the ports of call was St. Petersburg, Russia. That set in motion the plan to turn a decades-long dream into a reality.

I used Skyscanner to search for airfare to London. I set up a price alert with them so Skyscanner could notify me by email if prices changed for my selected flight. A couple of months before sail date, I got a price drop email from Skyscanner. The drop in airfare was almost half price. When I got home and saw that the fare was still available, of course I jumped on it. The flight was on Iberia. Iberia codeshares with American Airlines so I was able to get miles for the flight credited to my AAdvantage account.

I must stop here to thank both Nomadic Matt and The Points Guy for the tips they share. I used just one tip from each of them during the planning stages of this trip. You just read the results in the previous paragraph.

For the cruise portion, planning started about 7 months out. I put a refundable deposit down with final payment due 90 days prior to sail date. One day before the final payment was due, Carnival announced a massive price reduction on their European itineraries. I jumped on this one, too. With the savings, we upgraded to a balcony stateroom and applied the rest to shore excursions. All of the shore excursions except the tour in Amsterdam were booked through Carnival.

To get from London to Dover to meet the ship, we purchased the airport-to-ship transfer through Carnival.

Our cruise was aboard Carnival Legend. Here is our itinerary: