My Budget Trip of the Baltics, Stockholm and Helsinki
 

I flew from Copenhagen to Vilnius Lithuania, with Scandinavian Airlines. I had lounge access being 1K, so I started with breakfast, had a few drinks and had a light lunch before boarding the plane. On arrival in Vilnius, I took a taxi to Jimmy Jumps hostel where I was given a map of the city and shown the must see areas of the beautiful city.

With free waffles and coffee for breakfast the next day, I took a free walking tour of the city. Vilnius has many beautiful churches and I climbed the church tower since the elevator was broken.

The next day I started a tour from a company called Busabout. http://www.busabout.com/adventures/s...ia-baltic-tour There were 36 people on the tour. I was happy to see that I was not the oldest person on the tour. That belonged to a young 76 year-old woman from Australia, however, most of the people were young Australian’s backpacking. With another quick walking tour of Vilnius, we were off on a bus to Klaipeda where we had a barbeque on the Curonian Spit.

On day four we visited the Hill of Crosses on the way to Riga. An included pub crawl of five pubs was included and there was a great Ukrainian band playing Irish music in the basement of a Riga pub.

Day five included a walking tour of Riga and then we boarded the ship for Stockholm for the overnight journey. Four people to a cabin was included along with breakfast. There were a lot of young Swedish kids who had just graduated from high school and they had a foam party on the top of the ship. It was fun to watch but made me feel old.

Arriving in Stockholm the next morning, we took a bus to the hostel and had a walking tour of Stockholm. I visited the tower at City Hall, climbing up and riding down.

The next day I took a bicycle tour of Stockholm for three hours. This was extra but the weather was perfect for riding a bicycle. Later that evening we boarded the ship for Helsinki.

After an included breakfast on the ship, we took a bus to the Euro Hostel in Helsinki and took a boat over to Suomenlinna. We also had a walking tour of Helsinki and saw the Rock Church.

The next morning we took the three hour ship over to Tallinn, Estonia. It was a beautiful but cool day and we had an included bicycle tour of the city for three hours.

The next day was the last day of the tour. It rained all day and I relaxed and did laundry at the hostel.

The tour cost $800 and I spend about $200 of my own money for all of this. Great value in my opinion.

Incredible price!

What was your favorite city/destination? I haven't been to this part of Europe yet but hope to visit some day. My husband was in Tallinn in the 70's & loved it. It seems like most people combine a trip to Tallinn with a trip to the Scandinavian countries.

I really liked Vilnius. Many people do speak English along with Russian. The city was really clean and nice sidewalks. When you arrive at the airport, go to the information desk and have them organize a taxi to your location or otherwise you will get ripped off.