Nice and friendly ship

We cruised to the Baltic with Braemar. The food was excellent and the crew very helpful. Overall, the boat was in fine shape. The quality of the lectures left something to be desired. The principal lecturer was excellent, but the port lectures and the product based talks (eg on jewellery etc) were poor. I knew more from reading a travel book. The optional excursions were good and reasonably well organised. Use of the entertainment staff to support shore guided excursions was a little pointless. Some of the older staff applied themselves to the task; others, particularly the younger members looked totally indifferent.We felt it was unreasonable to charge for port shuttles when docked some way from city centres. Often, the availability of a shuttle was only announced after booking shore excursions. Some other cruise lines provide free shuttle services and let you know when booking excursions that there will be shuttles. There are three restaurants. The Thistle and Grampian were both fine but our choice would have been the Grampian. It is smaller and more intimate and is available to all for breakfast and lunch. The Palms is more informal and more basically furnished and is a busy buffet. Although tea and coffee is available for 24hrs, the coffee from the machine in The Palms wasn’t particularly pleasant and hot milk unavailable.