Baltic Bliss

Many of the port destinations in the Baltic Cruising region are walkable cities. Pedestrian streets and parks allow visitors to escape traffic. Continue Reading »

Tallinn’s Old Town is lined with dozens of souvenir, antique and specialty stores, not to mention clothing and footwear. Within Old Town, the main shopping streets are Viru, Müürivahe, Suur-Karja, Vaike-Karja and Kullassepa.

Kalmar’s picturesque 17th and 18th century stone buildings offer a wide range of shopping. Almost all streets in the shopping area are walking streets, with Storgatan and Kaggensgatan being the main ones.

Find Swedish handicraft such as woodwork, pottery, jewelry and textile craft as well as Swedish and international delicacies at Gerdas Te & Kaffehandel. Souvenirs from Kalmar can be found at the Tourist Information Center, Kalmar Castle and Kalmar County Museum.

In the Baltic Sea Region, visitors will find refined city lifestyles and rural country charm. From opera and ballet in St. Petersburg to open-air museums presenting farm and peasant life, the Baltics spans the gamut of cultural offerings.

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In Tallinn’s Old Town find St. Catherine’s Passage for craft workshops in a medieval atmosphere. Also, at Master’s Courtyard visitors can shop for jewelry and handicrafts, view art exhibitions, and sample confections made in the popular Café-Chocolaterie.

Within walking distance of Stockholm’s Vasa Museum is the world’s oldest open-air museum, Skansen, featuring a zoo with wild and domestic Nordic animals, and 150 cultural and historic buildings from throughout Sweden. Skansen, more than 100 years old, is a large living heritage exhibit well worth a visit.

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Early settlers were in the region surrounding Tallinn more than 3,500 years ago, and in 1154, an Arabian geographer marked Tallinn on the world map. A member of the Hanseatic League from 1285, Tallinn was among the most important Hanseatic trading towns, along with Lübeck, Visby and Riga.

Luxury furs, wax and honey from Russia were delivered westward through Tallinn’s port, while salt from Portugal and woolen fabrics from England and Flanders came through Tallinn on their eastward route.

Cruise ships approach Tallinn passing the town wall, church spires and the red-tiled rooftops of the Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The same basic cityscape was seen by seafarers centuries ago. Ships typically dock within walking distance of the city center.

Take your desktop globe for a spin or pull out your atlas and cast your eyes on Europe. Look north, not south, to find the cruising region known as the Baltics.

Even experienced travelers sometimes confuse the Baltic with the Balkans. The two regions could not be more different. The Balkans fought long and drawn-out wars for most of the 1990s, The Baltics, on the other hand, remained peaceful, stable, safe and clean — just as they are today.

One of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing cruise destinations, the Baltic cruising region refers to the Baltic Sea, which stretches from southern Denmark to near the Arctic Circle. Along its shores are some of the world’s most fabled cities — Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, to name a few. All share a common climate, with the cruise season running from May through September, and a common history.

Cruise passengers set foot in lands once inhabited by kings and queens (who still exist in some of the Baltic countries), of Viking warriors and German merchants, of Tsars and seafaring wanderers. In many cities visitors see reminders of a time long ago: medieval town walls, cobblestone streets, castles, palaces and museums that house age-old artifacts.

The past decades have brought great change in the Baltics. Former Soviet-bloc countries in the Baltic region now embrace cruise passengers, and even though English is typically spoken as a second language in many of the port destinations, cruise passengers will hear a variety of tongues spoken as they stroll city streets.

Copenhagen and Stockholm, the Baltic Cruising Region’s primary turnaround ports (where most cruises begin or end), not only are conveniently connected to the rest of the world but also conveniently connected between the airports and the city centers and cruise terminals. Infrastructure is among the best in the world, and Copenhagen boasts not only the world’s best airport (according to one survey of travelers) but also Europe’s cheapest and fastest airport-to-city-center connections.

You might say that with all that is has going for it, the Baltics were “tailor-made for cruises.” Cruise passengers certainly think so. Year after year, they return in record numbers to cruise one of the world’s greatest destinations.

The capital of Estonia, Tallinn is located in the Baltic Sea region across the Gulf of Finland less than 50 miles south of Helsinki. Tallinn has managed to preserve its thousand-year old beauty.

The Old Town has withstood a series of events ranging from Viking plundering and crusades to wars and occupations. With its miles of winding cobblestone streets and quaint medieval houses, Tallinn is the best-preserved old town in Northern Europe and has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1997.

Excursions include Lahemaa National Park.

The Baltic cruising region refers to the Baltic Sea, an arm of the North Atlantic Ocean that separates the Scandinavian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe. Stretching from southern Denmark to near the Arctic Circle and from eastern Denmark to southern Finland, the Baltic Sea is the world’s largest expanse of brackish water, fed by freshwater rivers from a catchment area four times as large as the sea itself.

Though the two regions share similar-sounding names, the Baltics are not to be confused with the Balkans. The Balkans are comprised of countries (such as Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey) on the Balkan Peninsula in the southern reaches of Europe. The Baltics, by contrast, are situated at the same northerly latitude as Anchorage, Alaska. Countries bounding the Baltic Sea and its arms, clockwise from the west, are Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany.

The Baltic cruising region is characterized by a variety of landscapes - low, rocky islands called skerries along the coasts of Sweden and Finland, Norwegian fjords, lagoons, inlets, and some of the world’s most fabled cities. On the far eastern edge of the Baltic Sea, Peter the Great’s “window to Europe,” St. Petersburg, is situated at the head of the Gulf of Finland. On the western edge of the Baltic Sea, Elsinore, Denmark, lays claim to Kronborg Castle, the setting for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” The Scandinavian capitals of Copenhagen and Stockholm, with their myriad attractions, serve as transportation hubs and are where most Baltic cruises begin or end.

One of the world’s most popular cruising regions, the Baltics also are one of the world’s fastest growing cruise markets. Annually, for several years running, port destinations in the Baltics have set records both in the number of cruise ship calls and the number of cruise ship passengers visiting ports.

Finding Bliss in the Baltic

SOMEWHERE IN THE BALTIC SEA, July 1 — It is near midnight, or at least that it is what my watch tells me. The sun and sky suggest otherwise. The bright orange orb hovers over the watery horizon, casting a reddish-yellow glow on a cloudless sky.

My (then) wife and I stand on our stateroom balcony waiting for the sun to dip below the horizon. Our body clocks are out of sync, six times zones east of our home (we’ll lose two more hours as the clock moves forward one hour on each of the first two nights of our cruise from Copenhagen).

The sun seems that it will never set, even as the clock ticks — and ticks.

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