Baltic Bliss

Spend a leisurely morning strolling the markets in many Baltic Sea destinations. Cruise passengers can hardly miss Helsinki’s famous Kauppatori, the Market Square, selling almost everything from fresh fish to handicrafts. The Old Market Hall next to the Market Square is worth a visit as well. The Old Market Hall offers historic charm and a wide assortment of fresh fish and special foods, including canned bear meat! Continue Reading »

The Baltic Cruising Region is rich with castles and royal palaces. Visitors can still see the changing of the guard in Copenhagen’s Amalienborg Palace, residence of Queen (changing of the guard daily at noon); and in Stockholm, where the main guard has been at Kungliga Slottet since 1523. Today, military units and bands from all over the Sweden participate.
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Stockholm has endless shopping possibilities with several areas in the city of interest to shoppers. Gamla Stan features gift shops, including the inviting Slottsboden in Kungliga Slottet, specializing in genuine handicrafts and antiques.

City center is the place to go for big department stores and shopping malls. NK and Gallerian are located on Hamngatan; Åhléns City, PUB and Debenhams on Drottninggatan; and Sturegallerian at Stureplan.

Small boutiques are scattered throughout the city; however, the greatest concentration is in the area between Norrmalmstorg and Stureplan. Södermalm is filled with shops and galleries, where shoppers can buy everything from exquisite ceramics at Blås & Knåda to jewelry at Efva Attling’s atelier. Both Madonna and Jennifer Aniston wear her creations.

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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With a history that dates back many millennia, the Baltic Sea Region is awash in museums. In fact, some of the cities, contained within well-preserved medieval town walls, could be considered to be museums themselves.

Museum-seekers will find no better place to begin than in Stockholm. With more than 100 museums, Stockholm boasts the world’s highest concentration of museums. Visitors with time to see only a few will not want to miss the Vasa Museum (pictured), which houses a warship (the actual ship, not a model) that in 1628 sank in the harbor on its maiden voyage and was brought up from the depths in 1961. Nothing can prepare visitors for the scale of what they will see in the city’s most popular museum, built in 1990.

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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Maritime and ship museums are a part of the living history in the sea-faring nations of the Baltic Cruising Region. Visitors enthralled by Stockholm’s Vasa Museum (pictured) will also want to see Oslo’s ship museums: The Polarship Fram Museum, featuring the entire original Arctic exploration ship FRAM, built in 1892, exhibited with its original interior and objects; Kon-Tiki Museum, containing the original vessel and objects from Thor Heyerdahl’s many exhibitions, including famous Kon-Tiki raft from 1947 and the papyrus raft RA II from 1970; and The Viking Ship Museum, featuring the restored Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune ships as well as other findings from royal burial mounds around the Oslo Fjord.

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Founded in 1200, Stockholm started out as a port destination. Built on 14 islands, Sweden’s capital city often is called the “City That Floats On Water.” The Baltic Sea meets Lake Malaren in Stockholm’s Old Town, giving the city not only a reach into the Swedish countryside but also to the rest of the world via the sea. The waterways have always served as important transport lanes to and from the city.

The journey to Stockholm’s city center begins nearly 50 miles east, at the tip of a beautiful archipelago comprised of 30,000 islands, islets and rocks. Many of the islands are uninhabited, rocky outcrops that are homes only to birds. Others have quaint red-and-white Swedish cottages.

Once docked at one of several locations in Stockholm, cruise passengers find it easy to make their way (by foot or taxi) to Stockholm’s Old Town and the city’s other attractions. Ships too large to navigate the archipelago safely must dock one hour’s bus ride away.

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.

For cruise passengers, most of the Baltic Sea ports are close to the city centers and attractions. Many piers and terminals are within walking distance of the city centers. Others are only a short transit away.

Public transport in the Baltic Sea region is safe, reliable, clean and cheap. Of the to turn-around ports Copenhagen and Stockholm, Copenhagen has the fastest and cheapest airport-to-city-center rail link of any European capital: just 13 minutes and about US $5. Its primary cruise terminal, Langelinie, is within walking distance of the major sites in Copenhagen. Some ships dock at Freeport Cruise Terminal, a 10- to 15-minute shuttle or taxi ride away from the city center.

Stockholm’s city center can be reached from the airport in about 20 minutes on the Arlanda Express for under $30 per person. Stockholm has numerous docking facilities, with the farthest being a one-hour transit away from the city center. Most ships, however, dock at the city center, within walking distance of Stockholm’s primary attractions.

In some port destinations, cycling is popular. In Copenhagen, for example, you will find cycle paths alongside virtually every street, as well as free city bikes available to borrow from stands throughout the city from spring to autumn.