Baltic excursions

[Coventry417]

We will be traveling on a Baltic cruise and was hoping for some excursion advice. There are 7 cities where we are trying to make the decision whether to sign up for an excursion or go on our own. These excursions are pricey and we’ve been on some where we wished we hadn’t paid for one. The cities are Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm, Visby, Gadansk, Gothenburg, and Oslo. We get 4 included in our cruise and wondered which ones we should actually pay for. Thanks

[Flatbush Flyer]

35 minutes ago, Coventry417 said:

We will be traveling on a Baltic cruise and was hoping for some excursion advice. There are 7 cities where we are trying to make the decision whether to sign up for an excursion or go on our own. These excursions are pricey and we’ve been on some where we wished we hadn’t paid for one. The cities are Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm, Visby, Gadansk, Gothenburg, and Oslo. We get 4 included in our cruise and wondered which ones we should actually pay for. Thanks

If you took O Life excursions perk for cruises commencing after mid-May 2019, the intuitive website cart will automatically count the most expensive of your desired tours against your allowance as long as they are the basis group of tours (I.e., no OE or OS, et al. designations). The rest you will pay for by CC. If your total chosen excursions meet the minimum number for the Your World discount, you'll get a 25% break on those paid for with CC.

Edited February 27, 2019 by Flatbush Flyer

[LHT28]

you can do Tallin, Oslo, Gothenburg  on your own

do some research on what is there that interests you 

JMO

[Andee]

We found Oslo, Helsinki, and Tallinn easy to do on our own.

[cbb]

these are easy cities to do diy:  these will get you started thinking!!!  We use these sources often as well as the tourist webpages for each city/country.  Have fun researching because i only did a few for you.....

https://www.frommers.com/destinations/helsinki/walking-tours

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/a-walking-tour-of-tallinn-5779/

 

https://www.frommers.com/destinations/stockholm/walking-tours/walking-tour-1

https://www.frommers.com/destinations/stockholm/walking-tours/walking-tour-2

 

https://www.frommers.com/destinations/oslo/walking-tours

[cbb]

forgot to say that the Smithsonian walking tour of Tallinn is from Rick Steves, another great source.

[Coventry417]

Thanks, this is a big help. We are looking for areas that we can walk or an easy taxi ride from the port. 

[LHT28]

Oslo & Tallin  are easy  to walk around  

www.visitoslo.com 

check out the ports of call forum 

do some research on what you might like to see in the areas

We do not what your interests are

 

[CanEcosse]

We used "Free Tours Visby".  (E Mail free-tours-visby@hotmail.com). A group got together via Roll Call.

Easy walk from ship to meet him in town for a 1 1/2 hour tour - excellent.

works on a "pay me what you think it was worth" basis. Everyone was delighted with it.

 

In Tallinn, one of our Roll Call group had booked a walking tour through the Tourist Information Centre.

Again, this was excellent. More comprehensive and cheaper than the ship excursion.

Edited February 27, 2019 by CanEcosse

[pinotlover]

Stockholm is also very easy DIY. Oceania had a shuttle from the ship that dropped us off in front of the bridge leading over to the palace area. Easy walking! 

 

Want to do the easy visit? Get on a water bus ( or whatever they call it) and ride all around the various ports, sights, and highlights of the City from the water! Much better than any actual bus HoHo!

[cbb]

we left ship in Stockholm as soon as we could, grabbed a city bus, and went to the Vasa.  We finished just as the first shorex bus showed up!!! 

 

[Mura]

That's the way we got to the Vasa as well.  We were docked far out of town as I recall -- overnighted in Stockholm and then we stayed a few more days on our own.  A very special city but easy to do on your own.  And the Vasa is not to be missed.

 

We were there in 2001 on Renaissance.  Across the street from the Vasa was a very enjoyable handicraft museum as well.

 

Mura

[halfapair]

We did Tallinn & Gdansk on our own. It was nice in both cases because we got into town before the crowds showed up, so we had about 30-45 minutes of peace & quiet to explore, take pictures, and have some local pastries & coffee for breakfast.

[floridatravelersforlife]

If your cruise is 5 or 7 days of back to back ports with St Petersburg in the middle, you may want to schedule self tours every other day or so.  The schedule is intense and a little flexibility of the self tours might be helpful.  Our port stay at St Petersburg included a trip to Moscow. It was great, but physically gruesome.  It included air to/from Moscow and with delays, the tour was 22 hours long!  Our next day tour at St Petersburg was a private tour and we were thankful to have some breaks. A tour bus would have been out of the question.

[Go-Bucks!]

On 2/27/2019 at 5:00 AM, Coventry417 said:

The cities are Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm, Visby, Gadansk, Gothenburg, and Oslo. 

 

We went to Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm and Oslo on our own.

 

Some of the things we did were: the round church in the rock, church service in the big Lutheran church and the farmers market next to it in Helsinki; walked all over in old Tallinn plus 2 cool churches there; Vasa plus wandering around in Stockholm; and went to a recreated village in Oslo.

 

The Baltic was a great cruise 

[CintiPam]

I have visited six of those seven ports (all but Gothenburg), and all six are easy to do on your own.  I particularly remember the joy of having so much more time to visit the incredible Vasa Museum in Stockholm as well as taking the ferry out to the fortress on a gorgeous day in Helsinki to explore all the various sites there at our leisure.  I highly recommend the Rick Steves' books for help in planning your DIY adventures; he provides great walking tours and practical transportation advice.

 

Enjoy!

[Mura]

We were in the Baltic with Renaissance way back in May 2001.  We did Stockholm pretty much on our own because while the ship did stay overnight, we added on 3 days before joining Danish friends at their home.  I agree that doing a wonderful museum like the Vasa is far better on your own.  I always prefer to take as much time as I want at a museum and guided tours generally don't seem to give you that time.

 

On that cruise we were still new to cruising and had done Helsinki on a ship's tour.  Ship's tour prices were reasonable back then!  But we did realize after the fact that we could have done everything we did on the ship's tour on our own with the city bus.  I'm not sure if it was a HOHO bus back then, but it probably was.

 

Again, we took the easy way out in Talinn and did a ship's tour, but walked back to the ship ... which showed us that we could very easily have done it on our own.

 

We had a private guide in SP with our own visas -- this was before Red October and these other groups came into existence.  We had a wonderful guide and she charged all of $60/day.  She didn't have a car -- we took taxis or the metro, which was fine with us. She asked me at one point if she was undercharging, my answer was extreme waffling because she was.  When I last checked with her, she'd figured that out ... Don't ask me for her name anyone because I think she's stopped guiding.  This was back in 2001 after all.  She was still a student then but clearly no longer is.  She only spoke four languages in addition to Russian and English ...

 

Mura