Looking for Baltic Capitals Feedback

[Chris931]

Hello,

   My husband and I are considering the 9 night Baltic Capital cruise roundtrip from Copenhagen.  

   I am looking for feedback from anyone that has done this cruise.  Positives / Negatives / Recommendations.

Thank you.

Christine

[fabnfortysomething]

2 minutes ago, Chris931 said:

Hello,

   My husband and I are considering the 9 night Baltic Capital cruise roundtrip from Copenhagen.  

   I am looking for feedback from anyone that has done this cruise.  Positives / Negatives / Recommendations.

Thank you.

Christine

if you look at links to reviews at bottom of my post there is one from this years Baltics cruise-we embarked Warnemunde but I described what witnessed of both embarkation experiences

[dexddd]

We did this but back when it was a 12 nighter.  Only couple negatives I can think of is the airfare from US is crazy high and with it being now 9 nights there isn't much time to relax.  Weather can be a bit cool too.

Positives - well pretty much all the history and sights within those countries.  I'd highly suggest you do private tours in Russia and Germany (go to Berlin, you won't regret it).  You will spend quite a bit of money on the tours but they will be well worth it.  Very diverse group on our sailing from all over the world.

[MDTrip]

We did it in Sept 2017. It was FABULOUS!  It is obviously very port intensive. I did a ton of research and we did our own thing in each port except Russia. We did a LOT of walking, because we wanted to see everything there was to see in each port and not spend a lot of money. There are tour companies that are not with NCL that are cheaper, and well worth it in Russia. I would never try to do Russia on your own. There is a lot of discussion on each port in the forums. It is well worth the time invested.

[rocklinmom]

My family and I (with three teens) did this cruise on the Getaway in July 2017.  It was a blast!  We embarked in Copenhagen which was a really cool city - we made sure to visit Tivoli Gardens while there.  Airfare can be high but I snagged a deal on KLM (so layovers each way in AMS) for $1100pp (which was actually a pretty good deal at the time).  Look for SAS airlines and see if they fly direct to Copenhagen from your area.  The itinerary is great, we especially liked St. Petersburg and Stockholm.  Tallinn was also really cute.  You definitely see a lot of unique cities.  I would recommend it! 

[FitchburgWIFamily]

We did it a couple of years ago.  We loved this cruise, loved all the ports.   We did not go all the way into Berlin, be we loved our time on the German coast.

We stayed in Copenhagen for a night after the cruise to do Tivoli Gardens and other Copenhagen sites.  The next day were were able to take in Kronborg Castle made famous in Shakespeare's Hamlet.  The castle if in Elsinore an easy train ride away, and there is a great maritime museum on the same grounds.

Norway has a very good very low cost airline, so we also tagged on a quick flight to Oslo that evening.  From Oslo the next morning we did the Norway in a Nutshell tour which was breath-takingly gorgeous.  Its a Train to Boat to Bus to Train tour from Oslo that takes you over the mountains, through the Fjords and leaves you on the opposite coast in Bergen.

Denmark and Norway had very easy to use trains from airports to downtown, and very helpful citizens if you stopped to ask a question.  Even if we didn't' ask, if we stopped to look at a map, someone almost always stopped to volunteer with directions.

Rick Steves has a great book on cruising the Baltic ports I strongly recommend.  His walking tour of Estonia was spot-on, very easy to follow, and made for a very good day in a wonderful city.  Even for ports where we didn't do his tour, he had a ton of information that was very useful.

The Hop On Hop Off in Finland works great: ride it around once to figure out what you want to stop at and then start to get off your second time around.  The Hop on Hop Off in Sweden doesn't work quite as well, there aren't as many free things to hop off at.

Germany (the coastal cities in the former East Germany) and Russia were a little harder to get around as an only-English speaker, but all of Scandinavia and Estonia were extremely easy for English speakers.

We did a mix of private and ships tours, and had good luck with all.

We cruised in May....weather was almost too hot....but the weather is pretty unpredictable.