We caught Gdansk on the first day of the annual St. Dominic's festival, a 700-plus-year-old street fair with craft and food stalls and a parade of medieval knights and damsels. In 1989, when Poland overthrew Communist rule, the city had few shops, our guide told us; today the cobbled old town-streets are lined with boutiques specializing in amber.

HIGHLIGHTS

But the highlights clearly were St. Petersburg and Berlin, where we'd arranged private tours for our longer-than-usual port stops.

Not that either was nearly long enough. We dashed from site to site, strolling at some, simply driving by others. To avoid long waits for lunch, we packed fruit and sandwiches from the breakfast buffets -- a real deal, when we discovered the unbelieveable price of just about everything in Europe.

Our two days in St. Petersburg were barely enough to make it to the most famous Tsarist haunts. At the spectacular Easter Egg-blue Catherine's Palace, we marveled at the majesty of gilt interior restored from mere rubble after World War II. Nearby Paul's Palace -- bypassed by most tours -- was a delicate jewel box of Wedgewood-like ceilings and inlaid floors. The sprawling gilded fountains of Peterhof, the elaborately painted vaults of St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Church on the Spilled Blood, the tombs of the Czars -- all went past in whirl.

Our three hours in the Hermitage offered a glimpse in the appointment-only Gold Room filled with antiquities, icons and imperial jewels, then on through the soaring halls to gaze at paintings by Da Vinci and Rembrandt and every master of Impressionism.

''I saw more Rembrandts, Gaugins, Matisses and Cezannes in one place than I've seen combined in my lifetime,'' said Donna, an artist. ``I just couldn't believe it.''

The 2 ½-hour ride from the ship to Berlin proved well worth it, thanks to guide Richard Campbell. For decades Campbell worked here for the U.S. government in jobs he never quite explained, and for most of the years of the Berlin Wall, his office sat on the second floor overlooking Checkpoint Charlie. His ''back stories'' added perspective to the smart modern architecture, the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate, the new Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (he's been inside Hitler's bunker, located nearby but closed), the remnants of the Wall and the policies that built and sustained it.

Less momentous, he took us to the ice cream stand considered the best in Berlin, and to the local ''kaffee'' chain called -- appropriately -- Einstein. Despite searing heat, we had to snap a photo.

We could have spent another day, or two. Or more. If our trip had one serious drawback, it gave us too little time to explore on our own.

But given the rate of exchange, we agreed, a cruise was the only reasonable way to see Europe just now -- at least in high season. With modest hotels priced $150 and up, a small bottle of water at $5 and an unremarkable dinner more than $50 without beer or wine, a similar trip on our own would have cost a small fortune.

Worse yet, a less structured trip might have cost our casual but coveted friendships.

''I knew it would all work out,'' Donna confided one night at dinner. ``But what if it hadn't?''

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