International Travel to and From Helsinki

[ladiemarmalade]

Hello All,

Thank you all for responding to my previous post! All of your input has been very helpful!

I would like to plan the following trips from Helsinki and stay for 2-3 days each:
St. Petersburg, Russia
Tallinn, Estonia
Stockholm, Sweden

What is the level of difficulty to get to each of these places from Helsinki?
What is the best mode of transportation to travel to each?
What are some good websites to plan travel around this area (tickets, hotels etc.)?
If you have traveled to these places, please provide your insights.

Thanks everyone!

Ladiemarmalade

[Pursuivant]

About as difficult you can make it. You could say try kayaking over... Tallinn is easiest by ferry, St Petersburg as well unless you want to go through organizing a tour and getting a visa, but thats not difficult either. Then you can take a train or a coach and be carted around almost like "in the good old days". Stockholm - its a tradition of taking the ferry, but as it takes a day you can also fly over. The thing is, only St Petersburg is "international" travel as its outside the EU, you can say Stockholm and Tallinn are "domestic" as they're in Schengen... you need to have your passport with you, but nobody wants to see it. Theres a special dispensation of not needing a visa to Russia on the St Petersburg cruises, unless they revoke it again... Russians are a bit Russian still...

[Rip]

To Tallinn one can make with faster boats a reasonable day trip (get there in the morning, be back in the evening), if you wish. If you decide to take the boat to Stockholm, the timetables from and to Turku give you significantly more time in Stockholm (you might consider combining it with a visit to Turku). Having flown to St Petersburg I'd recommend any other means of transport. As stated above, visa is mandatory to St. Petersburg unless you take a trip by this company:
http://www.stpeterline.com/en/OnBoard/News.aspx (either two nights on boat and day between in St Petersburg or two nights in a hotel there)

To Tallinn you'd most likely go to see the medieval old town (Quite picturesque in parts)
Stockholm is of the three the one that most resembles Helsinki, but having considerably more history, and pretty much everything else I guess too.
Some parts of St Petersburg actually to extent resemble Helsinki (public buildings built around the same time), in away you'd expect capital of a small province resemble heart of the giant empire. One can start feel tired after walking lengths of few local city blocks and probably could easily spend a month in Hermitage, so do advance planning.

[geek5354]

Here are the links for traveling to Stockholm and Tallinn by boat/cruise. You can probably find more itinerary info and suggestions by searching the forum for old posts.

http://www.tallinksilja.com/en/
http://www.vikingline.com/en/Book-and-travel/

Since you asked for insights, be patient while getting on/off the boat to Tallinn. Things can be chaotic with unruly passengers/mob cutting in line and pushing from behind while boarding and disembarking. As usual, everybody wants to be the first to get on the boat and the first to get off. Many people of all ages go to Tallinn for booze runs. Watch that the tower of liquors on wheels doesn't tumble on you.

[Pursuivant]

If you take a slow ferry with Eckeröline (excelent breakfast, but dinner is not worth it), you can enjoy some "cultural observation time" with people swigging beers 6am in the terminal, 9.30 tango in the lounge and 70-year old ladies being totally plastered at 11 when you need to disembark...

Tallinn is worth staying a day - Viru Hotel is run by Sokos so you might find some deals. Anyways, its "sensible shoes" just like Porvoo.

[interleukin]

OP: have you considered also the Åland islands (Ahvenanmaa in Finnish)? This is the cluster of islands between Finland and Sweden (the ferries from Turku/Helsinki to Stockholm pass Åland). The Åland islands are a Swedish-speaking Finnish protectorate and quite nice in the summers. If you´re planning ferry trips btwn Finland and Sweden, you can always stop in Åland as well since the ferries go past.

[Pursuivant]

The Hki-Sto ferries do it at 3am, so rather the Turku boats. Theres also designated ferries just to Åland, so doing a bit of island-hopping could be possible - and getting to Stockholm as well.

Also, there is a ferry Stockholm-Tallinn and IIRC the St Pete line did have a Tallinn-St Pete route (does it still=?) so you could in principle do a bit of a "Baltic cruise" and experience the cultural differences... after lemon-sucking Estonians you won't whine about "customer service" and trying to get a coffee in Stockholm about "opening hours" in Finland. Though you'd need to go to Oslo to quit whining of the booze prices