Best Itinerary

Hi to all Baltics experts. Two questions: What are the best ports not to be missed when doing the Baltics? Would you include far away ports like Greenland-Island or Norway is better ? Many thanks for your input.

[quote name='oceandream']Hi to all Baltics experts. Two questions: What are the best ports not to be missed when doing the Baltics? Would you include far away ports like Greenland-Island or Norway is better ? Many thanks for your input.[/QUOTE]

I'll let the experts answer your question about best ports. However, I will take a stab at the difference between the further away ports. The western Norwegian coast is known for its natural beauty. The typical Baltic cruise is very port intensive and geared more toward history and architecture. If you have the funds, some cruise lines like Princess run back to back cruises that go to both.

"Best: is a totally subjective opinion of what is best for you, or for me. And those two things are probably not the same.

If you do some reading on this board, you will not only see many questions very similar to yours, but also tons of info which might help you decide what is "best" for you.

[quote name='oceandream']Hi to all Baltics experts. Two questions: What are the best ports not to be missed when doing the Baltics? Would you include far away ports like Greenland-Island or Norway is better ? Many thanks for your input.[/QUOTE]

If you mean the island of Greenland which is covered by ice, it is hardly a Baltic port. It is a Scandinavia country which is many miles west of any of the other Scandinavian countries.

Regardless of this minor problem, the great circle distance which is the shortest distance between 2 points on the earth and usually is not the navigational distance between Tallin (a Baltic city) and Nuuk (in Greenland) is 2367 miles. The route by ship is significantly longer, say 3500 miles. Based on reasonable ship speeds, it would take 7.2 days to get from Tallin in the Baltics to one of the few towns in Greenland.

I would say that you could not do them in the same cruise.

DON

Typical Baltic cruises visit Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Warnemunde (for Berlin), and a couple other ports. There are many slightly different itineraries that may skip one or more of the above mentioned places. Many people consider St. Petersburg the highlight.

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"][SIZE="3"] BEST, is very subjective.

You know the old expression, 'Different Strokes for Different Folks', well that is so true in the Baltics. While St Petersburg is the Jewel in all sailings, for us, we loved Stockholm the most, even though we had the shortest port time there. Out of all our ports, I would say Helsinki was the weakest, but that doesn't mean it was bad. We found Tallinn another jewel that remains undiscovered by many.

We just loved the idea of roaming around on our own, discovering small, out of the way shops and places of interest. Maybe Tallinn resembled what we pictured 'old Europe' to be like, but it was just so charming and medieval.
Now others may have loved Helsinki, and found Warnemunde a bit of a drag. They all need to be experienced to see which ones you loved the most.

It is all in what you are looking for and how you see these wonderful cities.

Cheers

Len[/SIZE][/FONT]