Given this fact, Natalie and I decided to take the plunge, but for very legitimate reasons (and to avoid subjecting R to 6 hours of bus travel), he and the Babas sat this one out. We have about 3 hours of drive time ahead of us… (Queue the nails on the chalkboard record scratch noise!!) What? 3 hours of drive time to Berlin? Berlin, the captial of Germany and the home of the historical and impactful times of World Wars I, II, the Cold War, and the Berlin Wall is 3 hours by bus or train from Warnemunde, and this is the closest we would ever get on a cruise ship. Our driver, Olaf, said hello, and once we had reached our tour group maximum of 24, we headed out of the parking lot and directly to the highways and Autobahn. On board, we received a pamphlet that provided us with a quick overview of the day and our tour. See all 153 pictures from our 2016 Baltic Cruise in the Photo Galleries We met two SPB personnel, one of which had a well structured list of all of our names neatly assigned to one of 3 buses and Natalie and I (R stayed with the Babas on board today for reasons that will make themselves known shortly) quickly boarded. And so, with the support of SPB Tours, we met our tour coordinators around 7:10am just off the gangway and checked in for our 12 hour “Classic Berlin Tour”. When a port city is officially identified as “Warnemunde (Berlin)”, it implies that this is your best bet to reach the much larger and more visited city in parantheses that is not accessible directly by a cruise ship.

The first official port of our 12 day Baltic cruise onboard the Holland America Zuiderdam brought us to visit the northern German port of Warnemunde, a pleasant, if tiny port on the water’s edge in the Baltic Sea. May 6, 2016: Berlin (Warnemunde), Germany

Spb tours berlin