The “MSC Fantasia” arrived at the Ostseekai from St Petersburg in Russia early on Saturday September 2nd for what is the 350th visit by an MSC cruise ship to the port of Kiel. Marking the anniversary, the ship’s captain, Guiseppe Galano was welcomed to the Schleswig-Holstein state capital by Nicole Claus, who is the Cruise Shipping Director of the PORT OF KIEL.
Afterwards Captain Galano and Nicole Claus unveiled a bronze plaque on Kiel’s Cruise Ship Walk of Fame to commemorate the anniversary visit. The Walk of Fame honours shipping companies and events which are of special significance for Kiel as a cruise shipping location. MSC cruise ships have been calling at the port of Kiel regularly for twelve years. “Rhapsody” was the first.The ship called on the 4th of September 2005, before the shipping company elevated Kiel to base port status in 2006. Since then Kiel has been a constituent part of the company’s northern Europe route planning and has to date been visited by nine different MSC cruise ships.
The 138,000 GT “MSC Fantasia”, which is 333 m long, is the biggest ship to have Kiel as its base port this year. The cruise liner has already undertaken 18 cruises from Kiel this season. Three more were to follow up to the season finale on September 16th, when the ship heads for the Mediterranean. The northern Europe cruises, already undertaken and still to be undertaken by “MSC Fantasia”, involve not only the major cities of the Baltic on the route Kiel, Copenhagen, Stockholm,Tallinn/Helsinki, St Petersburg and Kiel, but also the Norwegian fiords on the route Kiel, Copenhagen, Geiranger, Flåm, Stavanger and Kiel.