In 1990, I sailed aboard the Sun Viking (part of the  Royal Caribbean Cruise Line) from England to Norway, Sweden, Finland and into Russia winding back via Poland and Germany to end up in London again.

This was probably the most memorable cruise in that my son just happened to be born exactly 9 months after taking it !

The midnight sun in was amazing, you could be out on deck at midnight and still light out. St Petersburg (called Leningrad when we visited) was such a contrast between old and new.   You can see the street pictures are so gray, yet the Hermitage and Catherines Palace were shimmering with gold.  We went into a grocery store to look around and saw the meat in the freezers, except they had no power to them so not actually sure how they kept the stuff cold.

One of the most interesting things about this cruise (and obviously way before privacy laws) they published a “Passenger List” which was circulated to every cabin and listed each passenger and the city they came from.  It was a really nice keepsake and too bad they had to do away with it.

Loved the beautiful Baltic cities of Helsinki, Olso and Stockholm – it was hard to pick a favourite.