Excursion help ULTIMATE SCANDINAVIA-RUSSIA

Hi everyone!

I'm currently checking out the Ultimate Scandinavia-Russia 13 night cruise on the beautiful Serenade of the Seas for July of next year, and since this is a completely new trip for me, I thought to ask about excursions to these beautiful ports!

I'm looking for absolute must-sees and don't want to miss anything big! This is the itinerary:

Day 1-2: Stockholm, Sweden

Day 3: Helsinki, Finland

Day 4-6: St. Petersburg, Russia (I know I want to see the St.P Ballet one day, but what about the other two? suggestions?)

Day 7: Tallinn, Estonia

Day 8: Riga, Latvia

Day 9: Klaipeda, Lithuania

Day 10: At sea

Day 11: Berlin, Germany

Day 12: Fredericia, Denmark

Day 13-14: Copenhagen, Denmark

I'd love to hear about your experiences! Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone!

 

I'm currently checking out the Ultimate Scandinavia-Russia 13 night cruise on the beautiful Serenade of the Seas for July of next year, and since this is a completely new trip for me, I thought to ask about excursions to these beautiful ports!

 

I'm looking for absolute must-sees and don't want to miss anything big! This is the itinerary:

 

 

Day 1-2: Stockholm, Sweden

 

Day 3: Helsinki, Finland

 

Day 4-6: St. Petersburg, Russia (I know I want to see the St.P Ballet one day, but what about the other two? suggestions?)

 

Day 7: Tallinn, Estonia

 

Day 8: Riga, Latvia

 

Day 9: Klaipeda, Lithuania

 

Day 10: At sea

 

Day 11: Berlin, Germany

 

Day 12: Fredericia, Denmark

 

Day 13-14: Copenhagen, Denmark

 

I'd love to hear about your experiences! Thanks in advance!

Stockholm:

-Gamla Stan

-Vasa Museum

-Don´t miss the sailaway and the next few hours

Helsinki:

-Rock church

-Market Hall and open air fish market

St. Petersburg:

-Peterhof, especially outside fountain garden

-Catherines Palace with amber room

-Hermitage

-Tour around City sights

-I highly recommend to skip ship tours and look for a small Group private excursion that customize your days there

-Best excursion I ever had there was a two day tour with a private car, Driver and tour guide for just the two of us. It was absolutely customized and we stopped at places we couldn´t go with a big Group and no stop was a big loss of time with waiting for everyone was ready and on the bus again. We jst stayed as Long as we needed.

Tallin:

Best part of it is the old medival town. No Need for tours IMO. It´s most easy to get there form port and walk around.

Berlin:

Be Aware you are not Docking in Berlin, as it´s nowhere Close to the sea. You will be most likely Docking in Warnemünde and it´s a several hour trip one way to Berlin. I would not visit Berlin on a cruise.

Copenhagen:

-Again a City that is very walkable. HOHO tours are offered ashore.

Thanks for all the tips! I'll check out all those places!

 

Berlin:

Be Aware you are not Docking in Berlin, as it´s nowhere Close to the sea. You will be most likely Docking in Warnemünde and it´s a several hour trip one way to Berlin. I would not visit Berlin on a cruise.

As for Berlin, the RCI site says Rostock is where we will be stopping, with "easy access" to Berlin and a couple other German cities, Do you still not recommend visiting if we were docking there?

Thanks for all the tips! I'll check out all those places!

 

 

 

 

 

As for Berlin, the RCI site says Rostock is where we will be stopping, with "easy access" to Berlin and a couple other German cities, Do you still not recommend visiting if we were docking there?

For sure try to do a Berlin tour. The bus ride to town is interesting and is about one hour.

Thanks for all the tips! I'll check out all those places!

 

 

 

 

 

As for Berlin, the RCI site says Rostock is where we will be stopping, with "easy access" to Berlin and a couple other German cities, Do you still not recommend visiting if we were docking there?

Warnemünde is the Harbor of Rostock;)

Access to Berlin is probably easy as the cruiselines usually will set up Special Trains into Berlin, but it´s still a several hour trip each way. I would think around 3 hours one way, so your Berlin trip would be 6 hours just travelling to and from. I´m not saying Berlin isn´t worth visiting, but IMO it´s just too far from the sea to do so with a cruise.

Wait, so is it a 3 hour drive or a 1 hour drive into town? cause that's a huge difference!

Regarding the SP Ballet, check to see if they are away on tour during July.

We booked our multi-city excursions with SPB tours. Highly rated on tripadvisor.

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Hi everyone!

 

I'm currently checking out the Ultimate Scandinavia-Russia 13 night cruise on the beautiful Serenade of the Seas for July of next year, and since this is a completely new trip for me, I thought to ask about excursions to these beautiful ports!

 

I'm looking for absolute must-sees and don't want to miss anything big! This is the itinerary:

 

 

Day 1-2: Stockholm, Sweden

 

Day 3: Helsinki, Finland

 

Day 4-6: St. Petersburg, Russia (I know I want to see the St.P Ballet one day, but what about the other two? suggestions?)

 

Day 7: Tallinn, Estonia

 

Day 8: Riga, Latvia

 

Day 9: Klaipeda, Lithuania

 

Day 10: At sea

 

Day 11: Berlin, Germany

 

Day 12: Fredericia, Denmark

 

Day 13-14: Copenhagen, Denmark

 

I'd love to hear about your experiences! Thanks in advance!

We just completed a similar cruise. In St. Petersburg, I would highly recommend using SPB tours. We toured with them for two days, and I feel as though we missed nothing! They are prompt, knowledgeable and extremely well organized. i would not hesitate to use them again. Each of the sites you would like to see are part of their tours. The buses each hold about 18 people maximum making the small group easy to navigate in some of the crowded sites.

As for Tallinn, we found (through TripAdvisor) a free walking tour. It was fabulous! The guide(s) are starting their own company and want groups to be small (no more than 12) in order to give individualized attention. The tour was about three hours and I believe we saw everything there is to see! Again, the guide was extremely knowledgeable and extremely well organized. We tipped the amount we would have paid if it were a trip offered by the cruise line. Well worth every cent!

Have a fantastic trip!

Caren

Wait, so is it a 3 hour drive or a 1 hour drive into town? cause that's a huge difference!

Warnemünde/Rostock to Berlin is about 3 hours one way.

Regarding the SP Ballet, check to see if they are away on tour during July.

We booked our multi-city excursions with SPB tours. Highly rated on tripadvisor.

 

 

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From what I understand online, there is a Ballet and Opera festival running May through August of 2016, so I'll be okay with watching that if the official Saint Petersburg Ballet is away on tour! haha

And I'll check out SPB tours right now! thanks!

 

As for Tallinn, we found (through TripAdvisor) a free walking tour. It was fabulous! The guide(s) are starting their own company and want groups to be small (no more than 12) in order to give individualized attention. The tour was about three hours and I believe we saw everything there is to see! Again, the guide was extremely knowledgeable and extremely well organized. We tipped the amount we would have paid if it were a trip offered by the cruise line. Well worth every cent!

 

Have a fantastic trip!

Caren

Thanks for the info on St. Petersburg! Also, do you have the name of this walking tour so I can search for them? Thanks in advance x

We used ALLA for our tours on our Baltic cruise two years ago and found them very good and their multi-city comfort tour was quite reasonable,

Thanks for the info on St. Petersburg! Also, do you have the name of this walking tour so I can search for them? Thanks in advance x

Yes! I just remember the name - - Saku Travel in Tallinn!

Enjoy!

Yes! I just remember the name - - Saku Travel in Tallinn!

 

Enjoy!

You can look them up (with all of the reviews) at tripadvisor.com. Maarja was our incredible guide.

When we were in St. Petersburg on the Brilliance a couple of years ago, we used DenRus (sp?) for our tours. No problems.

We did the folkloric dance tour with them one evening. We had our own intermission snack & drink table.

From viewing the stateroom TV replay of the on-board folkloric dance troupe, it looked like it was just about as good as the one we saw in St. Perterburg.

Wait, so is it a 3 hour drive or a 1 hour drive into town? cause that's a huge difference!

2 1/4 by car

3 1/4 by train

Times according to google maps ;)

We did a 2 day tour in Saint Petersburg with Anastasia Tours which I believe is now part of SPB tours. There were 4 of us and we chose to pay a few $ more for a private tour rather than the groups of 16 or so. It was great, we moved quickly, we able to modify the tour from the standard tour and thanks to a wonderful guide and driver got a bit off the tourist run to see how/where they lived.

Helsinki: Suomenlinna and with kids Linnanmäki amusement park.

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We just completed a similar cruise on the Brilliance in July of this year. We took mostly ship excursions in the ports other than St Petersburg where we used Alla Tours and we took the 2-day Comfort Tour. It was superb! If you go to TripAdvisor you will get lots of reviews and information. Alla and SPB tours are both highly rated. You can't go wrong with either of them. If we did it again we would actually book all port excursions with Alla or SPB and not take ship excursions which are slow and crowded. Both of these companies give a multi-port discount. Alla offers an evening excursion to the Ballet or to the Faberge Museum. We would not spend the money to tour Tallinn Estonia. It is easy enough to walk to and around Old Town on your own. It is a truly beautiful old city.

Helsinki: Suomenlinna and with kids Linnanmäki amusement park.

 

 

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Suomenlinna has wonderful spots to picnic on and Cafe Samovarbar had tasty treats and coffee drinks to relax with.

Stockholm- Vasa Museum

Copenhagen- Tivoli Gardens

We did a 2 day tour in Saint Petersburg with Anastasia Tours which I believe is now part of SPB tours. There were 4 of us and we chose to pay a few $ more for a private tour rather than the groups of 16 or so. It was great, we moved quickly, we able to modify the tour from the standard tour and thanks to a wonderful guide and driver got a bit off the tourist run to see how/where they lived.

I saw that you were considering a tour with Blue Mountains in Sydney. I have questions. Please email me at "ibfishingifish2@gmail.com"