Active Shore Excursions Scandinavia

[sjkistler]

We're considering a 10-14 night Scandinavia/Russia cruise. However, all of the excursions seem to be walking or shopping or sightseeing. This would be much more appealing for my husband and I if there were kayaking, scuba diving, whale watching or other outdoor excursions (yes, I know this is a northern itinerary, but these types of things were all offered in Alaska!). Any suggestions in Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn?

 

Thanks for your help. -Susan

[Susan-M]

Hi Susan

 

When we did these ports on our cruise in 2000, the only ship's tours we booked were in St. Petersburg (and they were well worth it). All of the other cities were easy to do on our own. In Visby and Helsinki we rented bicycles. In Stockholm we bought the city pass for 2 days which gave us unlimited access to their public transit system and admission to museums. In Tallin we walked on our own with our guide book. Our cruise started in Copenhagen, and we only had one day there, which was easily done on our own. Oslo wasn't included in our itinerary.

 

I'm not sure if some of the things you mention are offered on the Baltic cruise, but if you do them, you will miss a lot of interesting sites. We aren't shoppers either, but we wanted to see the highlights of these cities. There is so much history there.

 

We did the active things that you mention on our Alaska cruise, but there isn't much comparison to the ports on these two cruises - the ports of Skagway, Ketchikan and Juneau were easily seen in addition to bicycling, kayaking & whalewatching excursions.

 

I loved Alaska, but the Baltic still rates as my favorite cruise so far!

[juliejoe]

Our experiences on this itinerary were that the sights to see were on land, not on or in the water. It is a wonderful itinerary but I would not recommend it if you have no interest in history, art, architecture - or just plain soaking up the atmosphere of the ports. Check out the Baltics board and you will find many posts about shore excursions. You can also check out the shore excursions offered at each port by Princess - just go to princess.com.