How stroller friendly is a Baltic cruise?

[Florida_cruisers]

This will be our first cruise with a child (18 month baby by then). But we have cruised many times before including the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

 

Dh and I love to travel and I am contemplating on going on a Baltic cruise next fall with Royal Caribbean for my 30th birthday. Our baby is used to travel, by the end of this year he would have completed his 4th plane ride.

 

How stroller/kid friendly is this cruise?

[dakrewser]

There's not much of interest to an 18-mo old, but they are fairly easily distracted at that age. A lot of your walking will be on cobblestone streets, and not particularly smooth ones (Big cobbles, with space between) so it won't be an easy ride a lot of the time. Still, there was a 9-month old on our recent 16-day tour and they managed fairly well, even seemed quite adept at slinging the stroller into a tour bus luggage box in one or two easy steps!

[Guest LetMeGo]

There are some ports where strollers aren't a perfect solution (like Stockholm or Tallinn because of the old town), but it is still more than manageable.

 

If you've already been on a Mediterranean cruise and visited cities with historical sights, you should know how taxing they have been for you. If you've managed just fine, there probably won't be any problems on Baltic either. But if you've been exhausted with the walking in every port, you might have some troubles.

 

From Helsinki spesifically I can say that walking with children is not a problem... It can also save you some money, because one parent is allowed to travel in the city buses and trams for free with a stroller. ;) :D

[cs1]

We just got back from a Baltic cruise with our 2 1/2 year old. The stroller was a big problem in Tallin, St. Petersburg was actually great as was Helsinki (found a lovely little playground) and she enjoyed the fun animal shows on the way to the market. I must say that last year we were in the Med and it was much easier because we had a lot less cities and museum type places on that itinerary. It was more casual. We did bring a baby backpack last year for those towns where a stroller was not a good idea and it was terrific to have. Also, we found the people in the Med were much more kid friendly than in the Baltic.