Does anyone have a good resource for walking maps?

[JDincalif]

My DH and I will be on the Regatta London-Stockholm cruise beginning July 12. Although we have booked some shore excursions, we're interested in exploring some of the smaller ports on foot, using public transportation or taxis as necessary. We have Fodor's Complete Guide to European Vacations with its maps,and have looked at Google maps, but can't easily identify the port locations and realistic foot distances and times to 'must see' spots. We know that cruise lines do usually provide maps of each port, but these often have limited detail and/or focus on merchants associated with the cruise lines. Also, we'd like to plan some of our routes ahead a bit. Do any of you know where we can find good walking maps for cruise passengers of places like Riga, Talinn, Visby or other cities on this itinerary?

[Andee]

I'm not sure if they have maps for the cities you mentioned, but I like mapeasy maps.

[willmschen]

We used Rick Steve's walking tour of Tallinn and really enjoyed it, finding places we wouldn't have found on our own. The tour has a hand-illustrated map and a good written description of the route and things to see.

[StanandJim]

It sounds like you may not have done this type of walking tour from a cruise ship before, so I'll interject this information:

 

One of the advantages of cruising on ships that are the size the Oceania "R-ships" is that they are sometimes able to dock at smaller, more convenient wharves.

 

While this can be a great advantage, it can also disrupt your walking plans, as the locations of those smaller docks can vary widely.

 

On the itinerary that you mentioned, I have specifically heard of the ships using more than one docking location in Stockholm, Tallinn, Gdansk and St. Petersburg.

 

Have a wonderful cruise.

[Pearl64]

Look in the Baltic forum as well as the Western Europe one. You will find Lair Bear has several walking tours: Brugge, Amsterdam, Tallin. He has them in pdf format so you can easily print them out and take with you. They come highly recommended by CC patrons. One of my former students lives in Tallin and she said the Tallin wlaking tour looked user friendly and very comprehensive. Lair Bear also has a website that follows the entire cruise with the exception of Riga in place of Gdansk. Rick Steves is also another good option. I have all of his books ready to go. Have a great time. We are doing the same cruise in August.

 

Pearl

[Aruba]

There are some good walking tours in the Frommer's guides that I used on the same itinerary you will be doing. You can find them on-line (or buy the guidebooks of course). Go to their website, do a search on the city you're interested in, then you should see a link, possibly under "Activities" called "Walking Tours". Good luck.

[cruzmaven]

Look in the Baltic forum as well as the Western Europe one. You will find Lair Bear has several walking tours: Brugge, Amsterdam, Tallin. He has them in pdf format so you can easily print them out and take with you. They come highly recommended by CC patrons. One of my former students lives in Tallin and she said the Tallin wlaking tour looked user friendly and very comprehensive. Lair Bear also has a website that follows the entire cruise with the exception of Riga in place of Gdansk. Rick Steves is also another good option. I have all of his books ready to go. Have a great time. We are doing the same cruise in August.

 

Pearl

 

We also used Lair Bear's walking tours. Highly recommended!

 

http://www.*****.com/tallinnwalk.html

http://www.*****.com/Brugge%205.html

http://www.*****.com/Amsterdam.html

http://www.*****.com/haarlem.html

[riversidecruiser]

There are some good walking tours in the Frommer's guides that I used on the same itinerary you will be doing. You can find them on-line (or buy the guidebooks of course). Go to their website, do a search on the city you're interested in, then you should see a link, possibly under "Activities" called "Walking Tours". Good luck.

 

I've used the Frommer's walking tours and for the most part they're quite good, but make sure you have a map handy. We found the ones for Barcelona had quite a few errors (e.g. turn left when we should have turned right) and had to orient ourselves on a map quite a few times.