The average age on this cruise was 71 but mostly active and enthusiastic to participate.No children allowed on board. Has a loyal following. Helpful staff, good food and shows. From Tilbury to Tilbury so no flying required.Shore excursions expensive as always but worth it.Guides were all good and they managed to show us as much as possible in a limited time. If you do have fairly severe walking problems, then you need to be careful when booking excursions. The theatre where the folkloric show is held in St Petersburg has 81 steps, no lift and this is not stated in the pre-booking excursion brochure. In some ports there is quite a walk from the ship to the coaches, shuttle buses, taxis. There were a lot of road works in most of these cities and in some cases this required extra walking to get from say - the coach to the boat for a waterways trip. Also to be advised, the gangway from the Marco Polo to the shore is narrow.

Except for overnight in St Petersburg, stays too short in Baltic ports, particularly Copenhagen and Stockholm.This is very much a taster cruise so that you can get a quick idea of Tallin, Helsinki etc and decide whether you wanted to visit them on another trip to see more.

As non smokers we were not happy that there was so much smoking outside on deck 8 where it was sheltered to sit. Smoking is restricted to one side of the desk but as it is a small area and there were some chain smokers, it was not pleasant. Small, very overlooked swimming pool, hardly used and took up space on this deck which, in our opinion, would have been better used for more seating.