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It is 165 miles south to Berlin, a three-hour train ride or a slightly longer and decidedly less comfortable bus journey. For starters, all of the major river cruise lines sail the Rhine, from Viking to Uniworld and AmaWaterways. That puts the best Rhine River cruise within reach for any type of traveler. However, the differences between each can make or break your Rhine River cruise experience.
Mein Schiff 3
This homogeneity, while offering a unique cultural immersion, may not suit everyone’s preferences. With Celebrity's award-winning onboard service and luxury amenities, you'll feel special from the moment you step onboard. Spend the day in the sun and fresh air as you relax and unwind on deck at the Rooftop Garden, a living urban playscape inspired by childhood playgrounds.
Review of AIDA Cruises
Her main sun deck is situated amidships on deck 11 and 12 with the two connected with one another via pyramid stairs. And while deck 11 features a stage for animation, dancing and film screenings, deck 12 has two rows of deckchairs arranged in a half circle around the central skylight dome that illuminates the Theatrium beneath it. While the AIDADIVA sails at modest speed towards Stockholm, her passengers are spoilt with splendid summer sunshine outside. And although by no means comparable to the liners of old, the 2007-built ship offers a fair amount of open deck spaces on which to enjoy passages in nicer weather. A somewhat peculiar invention on Aida’s seven-strong “Sphinx” class (of which AIDADIVA is the lead vessel) is the “Wellness Oase“, the ship’s large spa area situated forward on deck 12 and 14. (There is no deck 13 onboard.) In order to gain access to it, you need to book a form of treatment, otherwise you can only get a glimpse of the area through windows from the outside decks.
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Mein Schiff features 13 lounges and bars, as well as a refurbished sushi restaurant and a steakhouse. Passengers can relax as there is no need to book for dinner -- all dining is open seating. After more than 25 years in the business, Aida Cruises does a lot of things right and caters perfectly to the needs and demands of its German-speaking core clientele.
On the other hand, the pizza just as the meals elsewhere onboard is free of charge (only drinks are charged) – a clear difference to Aida’s sister company Costa Crociere where Italy’s national food is only available at a premium. Passengers on the outside decks have the choice between the Pool Bar (deck 12) and Beach Bar (deck 11) to retreat for a drink, but can also turn aft where the Anytime Bar and Ocean Bar are situated on deck 12. Both the Weite Welt restaurant on deck 10 and the Bella Vista restaurant on deck 11 have an outdoor terrace as well if you seek a quieter place. These terrace-shaped decks at the stern are usually less frequented, and when it gets chilly there are even blankets available in the Anytime Bar to enjoy some fresh sea air without being cold.
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Aida also offers a full tea bar that leaves no flavour to be desired and fresh juices as well. Overlooking Rostock’s sea channel with its busy ferry traffic to Scandinavia, the two of us have our first lunch in the “Weite Welt” restaurant on deck 10, one of seven restaurants on board, three of which are large buffet outlets. In focussing on buffet options, Aida Cruises ever since its start in 1996 breaks away from most of its competitors, enabling its guests to dine in a more relaxed surrounding, but still offering a great variety of food.
Berlin is the capital of Germany and is a city with a dramatic and much-documented history. Once isolated, Berlin today is a bustling multicultural metropolis that’s home to a thrilling arts and culinary scene, as well as ultra-modern architecture. You can see the remnants of the Berlin Wall, visit Checkpoint Charlie, explore opulent palaces, or while away some time in a leafy beer garden. TUI Cruises -- a joint venture between Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and German shipping and travel giant TUI AG -- christened its first ship, "Mein Schiff," in 2009. The ship serves German-speaking cruise travelers, from families to couples to older folks. Even the voice of cruise director Malte after five days into the cruise sounds alarmingly hoarse.
TUI Cruises crew from Mein Schiff 3 start their journey home
AIDA's other partners for this project are ABB Marine & Ports (producer of Azipods/electric propulsion units) and Siemens AG (Europe's largest industrial manufacturing company). The company's statistics show that an AIDA vessel spends ~40% of its operating time in ports. Unlike other ships, AIDA's off-duty (human) crew are allowed to mingle with passengers. In July 2015, Carnival Corporation signed a shipbuilding agreement with Meyer Werft for the construction of all 4 new class vessels.
Port of Dover UK kicks off 2024 cruise season with AIDA ship visits
AIDA Cruise Ship Searching English Channel for Lost Crew Member - Business Insider
AIDA Cruise Ship Searching English Channel for Lost Crew Member.
Posted: Sun, 22 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
German and English are the main onboard languages on all TUI Schiffs (ships). After a full week onboard, we leave the AIDADIVA positively surprised and quite impressed. Although the Aida ships lack the splendour of main dining rooms with fixed sittings and passengers dining in classic evening attire, the meals in the ship’s three buffet restaurants have been fantastic both in terms of diversity and quality. The service onboard has been most attentive and the vessel’s 2,000 passengers were a well-behaved mix of families with children/teenagers and couples in their 40s and 50s. A cruise line is a company that operates cruise ships and markets cruises to the public.[1] Cruise lines are distinct from passenger lines which are primarily concerned with transportation of their passengers. The 28,890-ton, 408-passenger Europa, Hapag-Lloyd's upmarket flagship, primarily serves Europe's German-speaking travelers, but it's also well known to a more global cruise audience.
Certainly, in the burgeoning market for German-language cruises, Hapag-Lloyd's luxurious Europa reigns supreme over other Euro-centric lines like AIDA, Mein Schiff, Deilmann's Deutschland and TUI. It's so German that, without the guidebook's recognition, travelers who do not speak the language fluently never would know it existed. TUI Cruises is a UK-based joint venture cruise company (50-50) of TUI Group (British-German travel and tourism corporation) and RCCL-Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (USA-based passenger shipping company). TUI started cruise shipping operations in 2009, targeting predominantly the German-speaking market with a premium travel vacation product.
AIDA operates the German vacation cruising market with modern vessels and 140+ different itineraries visiting 250+ ports worldwide. One major plus is the bridge they gap between Unter den Linden and the former heart of West Berlin. Transportation routes are interconnected by good signposting, though some transfers require long walks up and down several levels. Buy tickets (machines have English translations) in the stations and on the platforms or directly from the bus driver.
If you are taking an Elbe River cruise that embarks here, be sure to stay in Berlin for at least three nights before or after the cruise. Kiosks, small stores and some transportation may not accept credit cards, so you should have a stash of euros, which of course you can use in many other European countries as well. It was almost 40 years before I returned, and I found the new Berlin to be a very exciting city well beyond my own previous experience. My first visit to Berlin came as a teenager, and I returned when the wall was being constructed in August 1961. While touring East Berlin to see the contrast with West Berlin, I was arrested by the Stasi and interrogated for the better part of the day. Falsely accused of taking illegal photographs and spying on the German Democratic Republic, I had to sign a confession; otherwise I would not have been released.
The venue is very spacious and can be converted into a sports bar when necessary. An innovative AIDA and Costa program implemented the latest cyborg technology in both fleets. Humanoid robots (named Pepper) greet and guide passengers upon embarkation. They also assist them throughout the voyage by providing information and tips on shipboard dining, entertainment, pre-scheduled daily events, shore excursions/tours. Most cruise ships dock at Warnemunde, near Rostock, on the north German coast east of the Kiel Canal entrance and west of the Baltic Sea.
The only downfall is that in summertime, many shows take place with daylight shining into the Theatrium since neither the side windows of the ship nor the vessel’s sky dome can be darkened. And again, “Rock” means a song mix that includes concessions to Aida’s core German clientele – “Tage wie dieser” by the Toten Hosen, “Winds of Change” by the Scorpions and, most bizarrely, “Hey, wir woll’n die Eisbärn sehn” by the Puhdys. But these are songs everyone can connect with, singing along the choruses happily. However, the service even with the pizzeria being only half-full is slow and if the result was really the “Best Pizza at Sea“ (as promoted by Aida), may be questioned. However, Aida Cruises like so many operators in 2022 suffers from a shortage of service staff, a result of Covid-19-related disruptions in work and travel patterns.
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