The Cruise Report With Cruise Specialists Cruise Reporter Ralph Grizzle

One of the great advantages of cruise ships is that experts frequently travel with you to help explain what you are seeing and visiting. When cruising in culturally significant places like Europe or in natural wonderlands like Alaska, the cruise lines will schedule sessions with experts who can add meaning and understanding to the visit.

The headline above could lead you to believe that this story was posted a few months late. After all, the last cruise ships that sailed the Baltic this past season threw off their bowlines and sailed away in September and October, right?

Wrong. Two ships were in port in Copenhagen this week, and from our view the Baltic cruise season ends today, when Fred Olsen Cruise Line’s Balmoral visits - and departs — Copenhagen on a Christmas cruise.

Finding Bliss in the Baltic

SOMEWHERE IN THE BALTIC SEA, July 1 — It is near midnight, or at least that it is what my watch tells me. The sun and sky suggest otherwise. The bright orange orb hovers over the watery horizon, casting a reddish-yellow glow on a cloudless sky.

My (then) wife and I stand on our stateroom balcony waiting for the sun to dip below the horizon. Our body clocks are out of sync, six times zones east of our home (we’ll lose two more hours as the clock moves forward one hour on each of the first two nights of our cruise from Copenhagen).

The sun seems that it will never set, even as the clock ticks — and ticks.