Excursion advice

[Balticadventurer]

Hello there, I am a first time cruiser and will be travelling next Aug-Sep from Copenhagen around the Baltics with my 83 year old mother and 8 year old daughter, We are on a budget and would like where possible to avoid the seemingly pricey port excursions offered through the cruise line. Given we only have 10-12 hours in port at most stops, my priority is to see the 'sights' without exhausting my mum or daughter and draining our bank accounts, as well as getting back to the ship in time. Does anyone have any tried and tested methods for going it alone on shore excursions? We will be visiting Oslo, Rostock, Tallinn, St Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm. St Petersburg is the only stop I am planning to purchase a ship offered tour. Thanks in advance! :)

[Shmoo here]

Hello there, I am a first time cruiser and will be travelling next Aug-Sep from Copenhagen around the Baltics with my 83 year old mother and 8 year old daughter, We are on a budget and would like where possible to avoid the seemingly pricey port excursions offered through the cruise line. Given we only have 10-12 hours in port at most stops, my priority is to see the 'sights' without exhausting my mum or daughter and draining our bank accounts, as well as getting back to the ship in time. Does anyone have any tried and tested methods for going it alone on shore excursions? We will be visiting Oslo, Rostock, Tallinn, St Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm. St Petersburg is the only stop I am planning to purchase a ship offered tour. Thanks in advance! :)

I suggest you head over to the Ports of Call forum and do some research on the various threads there.

[Clarea]

Just wanted to welcome you to Cruise Critic and point you to the Northern Europe forum here: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=192.

[LHT28]

It is too bad hosts cannot move threads to the right forums .....they used to do this

[Keith1010]

As you do your research you will learn what places you can do on your own and what places a tour would be in order.

You will definitely want to arrange a private tour for St Pertersburg. You will need to think through if your Mother can handle

all of the walking that might be involved so you might need to shorten it up depending on her stamina.

 

Keith

[Slugsta]

Hi and welcome to CC.

 

You have chosen a great itinerary but also (in my experience) an exhausting one as there is so much to see and do in each port. You are also likely to have most of your port days in a row, without a sea-day to rest in between.

 

We found the HoHo buses very useful and actually bought some of our tickets on-line before sailing. However, whilst it is good to know that you can just get straight on a bus when you disembark, there are also downsides to doing this. For instance, we sometimes found that we were better doing things on foot, or catching a regular bus/tram, rather than the HoHo.

 

As has been said, there is a wealth of information over on the destination boards, I'm sure you will get lots of ideas from there.

[paul929207]

In St. Petersburg, do you overnight? If so, Alla-Tours.com offers a two day tour with limited walking. Their tour includes the visa waiver that is critical in SPB.

[Floridiana]

"Oslo, Rostock, Tallinn, St Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm"

 

Tallinn:

We took the shuttle bus provided by the ship early in the morning. It took us to the edge of the old town. We walked around on our own and left when the small town became really crowded. If there is no shuttle bus, consider taking a taxi to the top of the hill on which the old town is located and walk down along the walls and through the narrow streets.

 

Stockholm:

Our ship docked next to the ferry terminal and one of the hop off-hop on on boats that took us to the Vasa museum, to the old town and back to the ship. Sweden is very expensive, consider heading back to the ship for lunch.

 

St. Petersburg:

We took a private tour with TJ, one of the very good companies offering private tours. Their voucher acts as the visa. You need to provide passport information when booking. Check your roll call to see whether other passengers have already started forming a group. Compare prices with the ship's tours. TJ offered combining our family group tour with another group, but we declined for various reasons.

 

St. Petersburg is very strenuous. Maybe you find a group that wants a slower tour without the cramming of everything into the two days. Maybe you consider one day with the three of you and a second day just you with a lower cost large group. TJ gave us a detailed itinerary so we could see what the standard visit entails. They would have adjusted it if we had wished to do so.

 

The itinerary was very 'palace, museum, church' heavy. I think only the first morning with the boat ride to the park at Peter's Summer Palace would have been fun for kids. The palace park has a fountain that spouts water when you are stepping on its stones and another one that rains from the top while people are seated in the middle. All the Russian kids had a great time at these fountains.