PhilipHF

Beware American travelers... your magnetic strip credit card may not be accepted everywhere. Most restaurants and attractions in tourist area will except it, but not all. We had a problem buying a "Copenhagen Card" (all-day transit & museum card) at the Copenhagen airport using a magnetic-strip Visa.

 

A few US banks are offering "chip & signature" credit cards but no "chip & pin" cards are being offered... yet. I keep hearing that will happen here in a few years. US banks would rather keep paying for fraud than pay for the conversion to the (much more secure) chip & pin technology.

If you are taking an independent tour in Tallinn, (not sponsored by the cruise line) pay special attention to the tour company's disembarkation instructions.

 

Tallinn has restrictions on the independent tour companies entering the cruise port loading area. They must stay outside of the gates, therefore, you have to walk past the gift shop and the long line of souvenir booths and go outside of the gate to meet your tour. (This isn't required at any other Baltic port.)

 

I'm not sure if we were the only fools that didn't read the instructions provided to us by our independent tour group, but we thought the tour guide didn't show up. We missed our tour because of this. Oh well, lessons learned.

We decided to use Alla Tours for our 2-day SPB tour for our upcoming June cruise. Like the other tour companies, they offer tours in the other Baltic ports. Did anyone have a good or bad experience using Alla for tours in Helsinki, Stockholm, or Talinn?

[quote name='Captain Hughes']We have chosen to book a custom 2 day tour for the 4 of us through TJ Travel as they have been very helpful and accommodating. I emailed Alla twice and received no response, nor from my message to them via Facebook. Disappointing as I had seen good reviews for them.

Anyway really looking forward to our trip now :)[/quote]

I also tried to contact Alla several times and received no replies. I am trying to book tours for all of the Baltic ports with 1 tour agency. (Helsinki, Stockholm, Talinn, and SPB) Has anyone booked multi-city tours with TJ or any other of the top SPB tour companies? They all have good SPB reviews, just wondering about the other cities.

I was on the Island Princess in October for a Panama Canal cruise. I found the food in the MDR to be consistently very good. The daily dinner menus were creative and usually had a variety of protein (meat) choices prepared in interesting ways. And considering the high volume, the quality was surprisingly good. As good as many of the NYC restaurants I'm familiar with.

 

There was one issue I had.... many of the fish and seafood entrees were flown in from far away... I don't know why they wouldn't highlight local Caribbean fare. It would be fresher and more interesting to eat local. But that was small complaint.

 

But of course food tastes are a subjective thing.... just my 2 cents.