Recent Baltic Cruise experience?
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Anonymous
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I've booked a Baltic Cruise for my husband and myself for May 2026. Round trip from Copenhagen, visiting Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Klaipeda, and Gdansk. I'm really excited and wanted to read some "cruise reports" by others who have been on a similar cruise - but all the reports I can find had an itinerary that includes Saint Petersburg.
Saint Petersburg is no longer included in Baltic Sea cruises. Can anyone either tell me where I can find more recent "trip reports" than I'm finding on Trip Advisor and similar websites, or tell me about their own fairly recent visits to these locations so I have things to research? Yes, just getting off the ship and wandering is an option, but I like to know a little about what is nearby so I don't miss something really awesome that was two blocks away from where I was. All of the recent "trip reports" seem to be video reports on TikTok or you tube or something, and I'm too old for those to hold my attention. I want/need something written. |
Anonymous
| Honestly, this is the kind of thing that a travel advisor can help with, at no cost. Research activities/tours at each location and book them for you if you are interested. |
Anonymous
| I’ve heard the cruise critic roll calls migrated to facebook groups |
Anonymous
| I would look at the cruise critic forums specific to the cruise line or specific to port cities. We just did a Gallagher cruise and I found the most helpful reviews on the cruisecriticccelebrity forum rather than in the South America ports forum. People often post day by day reviews of their cruise that are exhaustive. |
Anonymous
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Find the Facebook group for your cruise line and post there asking about the specific Baltic cruise itinerary. Cruise Critic is tightly moderated and you won’t get candid feedback. The Facebook groups provide the best intel. You’ll likely find more specific groups dedicated to the specific itinerary and the BTDT cruisers will share their tips on actual tours, etc.
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Anonymous
| We did a Baltic Cruise when they still went to St. Petersburg, but since you aren’t getting much feedback, I’ll chime in. The big things to see in Stockholm are pretty obvious (the Vasa, etc). We did do a water tour in Stockholm that was worthwhile. You can spend an entire day in the old city of Talinn just wandering around, and they had a nice market in the square when we were there, so I’d take cash for that. We had a local tour guide and he was excellent and full of details about the history of the city. Helsinki is a newer city and we’d done so much “city” & museum stuff by then we spent the entire day there on a boat trip to a beautiful waterfront house outside the city where we had lunch with a local family. It was a lovely day, and my husband thought it was one of the highlights of the trip. |
Anonymous
OP: I think we have the same itinerary (on Princess) --only in June. I haven't really dug into the details because it's so far away, but there is a site called "What's in Port?" that might answer some of your questions. Eventually it'll have the docking place for each cruise ship, which is important as to whether it's an industrial area or Old Town-adjacent. I'll also keep my eyes open for updated trip reports. There are a few stops like Gdansk where we'll probably take a tour because the port is a different city, but many of these places are either walkable --albeit lots of cobblestones-- to the Old Town areas or there is a shuttle available. I don't necessarily want an organized excursion that takes us away from the city, but we'll see. Except for Copenhagen (embarkation part), Oslo, and Stockholm, they are all new to us, so we might be happy just wandering. |
Anonymous
| Don't use Facebook. Google "cruise critic". |
Anonymous
I don’t think this person is talking about the cruise critic forums. The people that post there are often highly critical of the cruise lines and the reviews are candid, in my experience. (As opposed to the official cruise critic reviews, which are probably filtered.). My only criticism of the forum posts is that many people post every single detail of their cruise so you get a 20 page live summary of a 7 day cruise with pictures of everything. So helpful but a bit much. |
Anonymous
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Just following up on my last post….i just checked the HAL community forum on cruisecritic and searched for Baltic and there are two lengthy reviews from 2023 season — don’t know if that’s recent enough for you. Might find more recent in other cruise lines.
My other criticism is that many of the posters are older (surprise) so may not review some of the more active shore excursion options. But you can find specific excursion reviews in the port forums. |