Rick Steves Scandinavian & Northern European Cruise Ports

We are going to Europe, so we needed a good book to tell us what to do/where to go. Who else would you trust, but Rick Steves?! Some great info in here. Highly recommend!

I've used Rick Steve's Audio tours in Italy so when we booked a cruise to the Baltic I looked for guidance from him again. This book is what I found and it was a great replacement although I still prefer his audio tours rather than having to read the info out loud myself. I was able to provide my group with our own tours for most of the stops just by taking the city walking tours. So much information in an easy to carry guide book!

We were especially able to use this guide for our stops in Stockholm and our post-cruise stay in Copenhagen.

I have a collection of Rick Steves guide books and found that each book helped me save money and time and avoid frustration. This book is no exception. This book goes into detail about everything worth seeing at each port as well as the pros and cons of the different transportation options. The amount of information can seem overwhelming at first, but the book has a simple rating system that is very useful in narrowing down what is worth seeing during a short visit to each port. In addition to buying this book, I would recommend watching an excellent YouTube video in which this author discusses this book and most of the ports in it. Also, Rick Steves has many well-made YouTube videos for pretty much every major tourist port in Europe. One last recommendation: if you are considering buying this book, you have either booked a cruise or are considering doing so. I, as well as this book, recommend that you book your cruise through a travel agent. Even if you have already booked your cruise online, it is still worthwhile to go to a travel agent and allow them to work with the cruise line to "take over" your booking. Our travel agent (AAA) helped us get a better room and get an additional ship credits at no extra cost. The agent also helped us book our flights, purchase travel insurance and patiently answered our long list of questions. He even allowed my wife to have her passport photo taken at the office for no charge. Bon Voyage!

I loved this! Best book for all the cities we visited.

I bought this book for our Baltic cruise, and loved it! We prefer not to sign up for excursions where you're stuck with a huge group of people and undoubtedly waste a chunk of time at souvenir shop tourist traps. This book was perfect for exploring the cities on our own! Our cruise departed from Copenhagen & went to Stockholm, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, & Helsinki. Due to Russia's visa requirements, it's mandatory to book a tour for St. Petersburg, so we booked with SPB Tours and enjoyed being in a small group vs the huge cruise ship excursion groups. For Copenhagen, I'd highly recommend buying a ticket & reserving a time for Rosenborg Castle. We arrived when they opened at 10:00 on a Sunday, waited in line for 15 min, but had to wait another 45 min to enter the castle. We could've avoided the wait & maximized our time by booking online. We did each of the City Walks that Rick has of each port and loved them! An audio guide for these walks would be awesome (like the ones he has for Paris, Rome, etc.), but since he doesn't have them for Scandinavia, I recommend buying the kindle version of this book, so you can have it all on your phone instead of carrying a book everywhere. In Helsinki, he includes Suomenlinna Fortress, and I highly recommend taking a boat to this island Fortress and exploring it. After doing his City Walk of Helsinki, I wasn't too impressed with the city itself, but this island made up for it. Overall, this book is perfect for those who like to explore on their own and not be stuck on an excursion with a big tourist group. I highly recommend it!

Rick Steves is an amazing resource even with the omnipresent power of the internet and I always take one of his guidebooks with me for European trips. It was no different for a Baltic Cruise (Copenhagen, Warnemunde, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Stockholm) and I read through the info on the ports a month before my trip and also familiarized myself again the day before we reached the port. His knowledge is so informative for an independent traveler like myself who doesn't like to do cruise excursions and I was able to solely use the guidebook to figure out the public transportation system and get from one museum to another.SIDE NOTE: For St. Petersburg where you need to book an excursion to get off the boat, we booked the 2-day Grand Tour with Alla Tours and I HIGHLY recommend them. They put you in a 14-person group in a comfortable air-conditioned van and we visited the Hermitage, Spilled Blood Cathedral, Peterhof Palace, St. Petersburg metro, a Neva River cruise, Yousof Palace (where Rasputin was murdered), Peter and Paul Fortress & Cathedral (where all the Romanov tsars are buried), Catherine's Palace (with Amber Room), and St. Issac's Cathedral. It was the best value and 50% of what the cruise company charge for their excursion.

We purchased this resource before our Baltic Cruise. We dissected the book as suggested so as only to bring along the 50% or so that was relevant to our situation. At the port of Warnemunde Rick Steves was especially helpful in supporting our decision to visit Rostock and avoid the long train ride to and from Berlin. Otherwise, most of the detailed arrangements for tours etc. were guided by the cruise company, not the Rick Steves Book. Where the book is really helpful is in providing a record of the countless things that we saw in the various ports. Yes, we listened to the excellent tour guides, yes we took lots of pictures, but no we did not take notes! The Rick Steves book provides the background to help us prepare a tour scrapbook afterwards. Very good maps, text, sketches, etc. to jog our memory. Yes, you can buy a nice glossy tour book at each stop, but with so many tour ports and museums this approach would fill a whole suitcase. The condensed Rick Steves resource does the job much more efficiently.

A thick book and the author recommends tearing pages out of it as required in his video. Packed with info from the cruisers’ point of view from personal accounts of excursions to getting around and getting money. Written for the U.S. markets clear in some references and of course everything is in dollars. If you are worried about weight in your suitcase either don’t buy it or indeed rip bits out. It does however give you more than small guides with lots of pretty pictures. Small print so not for those with poor sight and some have complained about its thin paper and print, but if it was bigger you’d need a barrow to move it about.

This book is useful for both planning and using in the field although you might want to detach for pages due to its bulk - in terms of value for money, this volume delivers plenty. The layout is good and there are plenty of maps and illustrations with a useful narrative - I am using this volume to plan a Scandinavian cruise trip and have found it invaluable. Also one of my friends who is an experienced cruise manager with a large holiday company recommended this book to me.

Wow - what a lot of info they have packed into this!. Covers all the major ports. Certainly all of ours on our Baltic cruise next year. Excellent self guided walks. Great value - it will save us a fortune in expensive 'ship excursions' . And you can pull out the relevant sections needed. Love it!

The book is jam-packed with information for anyone planning a Scandinavian cruise/holiday. It contains all you need to know about the various ports of call and has maps at the front helpfully showing the main attractions for the most important cities. It will definitely be travelling with us on our next holiday

Good condition, lots of useful information on the ports we are planning to visit.Have visited many of the ports in the past and this book provides a succint reviewof these destinations.