No need to rise early today – this is a long stop. We arrived at about 6:00 a.m. and we're not leaving until 10:00 p.m. This stop is extended to 16 hours mainly to allow people to make the Berlin tour. It takes a 3-hour bus ride each way to get into Berlin, so we opted to cancel our SPB tour a few days earlier. T&J left early this morning to get on the bus, where we chose to sleep in.

Located on the northeast coast of the Baltic Sea in Germany, the city of Warnemunde (pronounced Vor-ne-moonday) is a quiet resort town lying on a vast white sand beach, which measures as the largest on the German Baltic Sea coast.

With 8,000 full-time residents its history dates back to the 13th century. Down the gangway and through a tunnel under the railway tracks we found ourselves downtown in this quaint little city. We headed for the lighthouse at the east end of town and then along the "strand" towards Hotel Neptun. We had heard that the tallest building in the city, originally built by the East German’s for their elite to vacation in, had a bar on the top floor that might offer us with a good view of the surroundings.

Up the elevator to the 19th floor and we could see everything. We continued our walkabout through some of the local residential streets to get a flavor and came upon the local town square, anchored by Warnemunde Church. Down to basically zero Euros other than a bit of change we decided we better build up the stock for the next few ports, Kiel, Germany – Copenhagen – Amsterdam and Paris so we found an ATM and whammo – Euros rather than Swedish SEK in my shorts.

Stopping at the local tourist board for my wi-fi, Deb came across a couple with a bright orange Tennessee Volunteer ball cap on. Seems they were originally from Chicago but were now retired and living in Loudon, TN. While I helped Paul get his iPad on-line, the girls talked Tennessee. A quick meet as they are on the Norwegian and heading for Estonia and then to Iceland.

Tonight staring at 5:30 p.m. is our German Oompah-Pah Oktoberfest night on the Lido deck – complete with bratwurst, suckling pig, Bavarian sausages and braised red cabbage with a wide selection of German beers. Sounds like this is right my alley as they’ve closed the dining room tonight with so many people off the ship and in Berlin. Not sure if our dinner mates will make it as they were to return around 9:30 tonight. On the whole it was a very pleasant day today with my girl.

Next stop Kiel, Germany.