All the main attractions are concentrated and if you are hardy with good feet and legs you can walk to most of the attractions, however, I do not entirely recommend it. The streets are mostly cobblestone and there are dedicated bike lanes everywhere we went. So be very mindful. Danes bike a lot and its mainly because there is a steep tax (180%) on the purchase of new cars. The lanes aren’t marked with obvious markings, but you can tell because they usually have a line of granite or a different stone that separates the sidewalk from the bike lane. If you don’t notice it – it just looks like the sidewalks is wide, but be careful and watch for bikes and do not stand in the bike lanes.

1. Tivoli is expensive, but it’s beautiful and worth the admission price. At night it is lit up very beautiful. There are many restaurants in there. They are very expensive, but you could probably get some snacks for a reasonable price.

2. Copenhagen City Hall: The Hans Christensen statute is here and across from Tivoli Gardens. It is the most impressive City Hall and public building we have ever seen

3. Stroget – Europe’s largest outdoor pedestrian shopping district. This is the pedestrian shopping district that many other cities have copied.

4. Nyhavn – Ice cream is good here and there is a kiosk (or convenience store) off one of the side streets of Nyhavn where you can purchase cans of beer cheap and just hang out on the pier and drink. Much cheaper and more interesting the sidewalk cafes. But either way works and Rick Steve’s points out where its located. Also, at Nyhavn you can catch a boat tour with a company called Netto which is located south side of the Nyhavn canal. It is half the price of the other boat tour companies and covers the same areas.

5. Amalienborg Palace: This is where Danish royalty have lived for a long time and currently live. There is a small museum that I found very interesting and its located in Northwest building (all four are built and designed to look pretty much exactly the same). It is marked with a tiny sign. Queen Margarethe lives in the building that flies the Danish flag – she is in town when the flag flies. This monarchy is connected to pretty much every European monarchy in history and they can trace back their lineage to the Vikings in 900 AD. The museum closes at 4:30 so give yourself plenty of time.

6. Rosenbourg Castle: This is another old castle of Danish royalty. It is a smaller palace and is very much lived in. I enjoyed this castle because it has some very interesting history behind it. Feel free to ask the guards tidbits about the castle. When we were there, they were willing to tell us stuff about the castle, the rooms, and interesting oddities you won’t find anywhere else easily.

7. National Museum – its free admission and it’s a lot to see. It contains a lot of Viking artifacts and other interesting artifacts of the ancient Danes and other exhibits.

8. Buses – most buses and trains go back to the Central Station (locals and signs call it Hovedbanegarden [HOETH-bahn-gorn]) – look for signs “Kobenhavn H” and ask people if this goes to Central Station. Since we were closest to Central Station – we took the A1 bus back to the Station.

9. Getting to the Cruise Port – I do not recommend walking there because its way out and once you get into the Port area there are a lot of warehouses and industrial shipping areas and it’s like a maze. This port also called Frihaven and buses headed in that direction are marked “Fargenhavn Nord”. You can take Bus 26 which takes you to the Oesterport Station. From there you wait for Bus 27 (which only runs every 30 mins or so) and this bus will take you to Frihavn. It drops you off within walking distance and view of the Port. Special Bus 25 and 27 will be picking up passengers at Frihavn port to take you into the City. Either bus is fine. Bus 25 drops you off at Nordhavn Station –BUT it picks up the last passenger from there back to Frihavn at 3:30 p.m. Bus 27 runs later, but it drops you off at Oesterport Station and then you have to take Bus 26.

Gorgeous town! I have never been to Estonia nor have ever believed I would. This town is too beautiful for words. It has a very interesting history. The name of the City literally means Danish town because originally it was. Then it got sold to the Swedes, and then the Germans took it and then the Russians and most recently the Soviets. But now Estonia is independent. You will have enough time to see the ancient walled city of Taillin. Just outside you will see Soviet buildings and other remnants (the contrast is very stark as the Soviets were more about utilitarianism than aesthetics). It’s really a magical town and breathtaking.

Highlights: Must grab a coffee drink and a delicious marzipan pastry at Europe’s oldest continuous café, Maiasmokk Café – beautiful and tasty. Prices are reasonable! Also for lunch we ate at this delicious and charming restaurant, Vanaema Juures – its in the basement but located around the old town well. Atmosphere is very homey and clean and the food is fantastic and reasonable.

Woolen and wooden goods and crafts are excellent here and the most reasonable in all of the areas we visited. Get your souvenirs here if you can. There is a part of town called Sweater Street and it’s lined up with venders of handmade woolen goods like gloves, mittens, wraps, scarves and of course sweaters. These are unique and beautiful handicrafts. One word of advice, the brighter the color of the item the less likely it’s locally made. Also, you can kind of bargain, especially if you buy more than one thing. I stocked up on mittens for my family and myself – thankfully I did because I actually had to use the mittens on my trip.

Wooden crafts – the wood butter knives are a thing to get here. Shop around because the prices can vary, but an average price is about 1 to 2 Euro per knife. We bought some from an artisan for about 4 Euro a piece and it was way over priced because we found decent workmanship at other places for about half that price.

Amazing and can be overwhelming. This was the only town that we opted to take a tour. We did it because we had about 2 days, the city is huge, and we don’t speak Russian or read Cyrillic. I suppose you could get around yourself, but you could waste time trying to find your way around. As always, we booked a tour through a company highly rated on Tripadvisor, TJ Travel. I never book through the ship because it’s always more expensive and you see less. One of our dinner mates booked through the ship and the contrast was very stark. They paid at least $100 more per person than we did and saw half of what we saw. We would leave at about 8:30 a.m. and return about 6 or 7 p.m. after a full day of touring. Whereas our friends returned about 1 p.m. – which seems like a waste of good touring time.

We booked a two day St. Petersburg tour and boy did we see everything – Hermitage, Winter Palace, Catherine’s Palace, gardens, Church on the Spilled Blood, St. Isaac’s Church, Peter and Paul Fortress, we took a wonderful boat tour, Peterhof, and toured Yusupov Palace (where Rasputin was murdered). Our tour was the only one that saw Yusupov Palace which for me believe it or not was a real treat and probably a highlight because it’s an unusual and beautiful palace originally built and housed very wealthy people not yet connected to royalty. It was a very extensive tour – we had a wonderful tour guide and driver. Our tour included two lunches at local Russian restaurants. First day we left about 8:30 a.m. and returned to the ship at 7:00 p.m. and the second day we left the same time and arrived back an hour before the ship was set to leave (we got back about 5:30 p.m. and the ship’s all aboard was at 7:00 p.m.). The cost for the tour was $300 pp plus tip which added another $45 pp (10% to the tour guide and 5% to the driver). It was not cheap, but it was well worth it. No way we could have seen and done what we did for less than that and in the time we had. Our driver, Leo, was excellent and our tour guide, Nina, was fantastic!

It’s a lovely city and one of the newer cities. It’s about 98 years old and you can tell its young. After some amazing cities like Taillin, Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg, I felt Helsinki was a bit of a letdown. It’s still very cool and I am glad I visited.

Highlights: Beautiful market square with a lovely esplanade and a market by the pier. We had coffees and snacks at the wonderful Café Kapelli which is located right on the esplanade.

1. Number 3 Tram – this same tram will change to Number 2 over some routes but basically makes a circle around the city and almost all of the tourist attractions. This is a cheap way of orienting yourself to the City and figuring out where to get off to tour sites.

2. We walked along the esplanade, there are shops all along and the Tourist Info is right around this area. There is also an outdoor market along the pier. We had lunch here and chose one of the food vendors selling delicious grilled salmon. We ordered one lunch to share because the portions were huge. There is also a building that has food stalls inside, but they were closed when we visited.

3. Church of the Rock – this is really amazing and worth seeing. This church was built into granite and has a copper dome which consists of copper coils rolled into a dome. Its very stunning. It’s a short walk from a tram stop.

4. The train station is also worth a peek. It has a lot of art deco throughout. There used to be a nice restaurant in the train station which contained art deco murals, but its now a Burger King. Good thing is that the art work and wood work is still there.

Incredible city! Beautiful and lots to do! Two days is not nearly enough.

1. Gamla Stan – or old town. We spent a lot of time here because its adorable and fun to walk around. We were able to walk here from the dock and I would recommend it if you can handle it. It took us about 20 minutes to walk to Gamla Stan from the boat. The reason is because you walk along the water and there is a really interesting Photography Museum which is open late (11:00 p.m. when we were there) and you have great views of the City. We also took a cab one night when we went to eat dinner with some of our older friends. Fun shopping and walking! Also a lot of nice restaurants.

2. VASA Museum – A MUST SEE! This is Stockholm’s most popular museum for locals and visitors alike. It houses the oldest intact ship found in Stockholm’s harbor. It dates back to the 1600s and 98% of the ship is original. The Swedes found it in the 60s after search forever. It took them 30 years to restore it and also preserve it. It’s a stunning ship and the history around it and what the Swedes learned about life around that time is fascinating and priceless. The ship was built to tall and narrow (by the King’s insistence over the objections of the engineers) – when it was launched it sunk within 10 minutes. No one was able to salvage or find it until sometime in the 1960s. We also ate lunch at the museum cafeteria. The food is very good there and in my opinion a good deal for Stockholm.

3. ABBA Museum – if you love ABBA or are interested in that kind of history – this is a fabulous museum and so much fun. It’s not a huge space, so it can be very crowded during high season and you could feel a little claustrophobic. But it was totally worth it to me! We loved it and it also only just recently opened.

4. Swedish Fika – This is a concept like English Tea – this is the Swedish version. The Swedes love coffee, in fact pretty much most of Scandinavia we visited are big coffee fans. So Fika is a late morning or afternoon snack of coffee (or a coffee drink) and a roll – traditionally the Swedish Cinnamon bun is eaten, and they are very delicious. More like a dense bread/bun with more of a cardamom taste than a cinnamon taste and its sprinkled with sanding sugar (the chunkier ones like pretzel salt) – its not like the American cinnamon buns, but I love it and its worth trying.

5. Royal Palace – this is a working palace, but the royal family lives elsewhere. Its very beautiful and there are guided tours offered for a fee (its really worth the fee because there are some very interesting things about the palace you can only learn from the guide. Plus you will miss most of the cool parts of the palace if you don’t do a guided tour). If you buy a ticket of the armory and the royal apartments, I think you get a discount. We did the Armory, Royal Apartments and the Treasury. The Treasury has the real crown jewels – unlike the Tower of London.

6. Changing of the Guards at the Royal Palace – they do this every day several times a day. The uniforms are modern military uniforms, but there is a marching band. Apparently, the guards often come from all over Sweden and its an honor to do this. Its worth seeing if you are around the area, but get there early so you can get a spot to actually see something.

7. Nobel Prize Museum and Grillska Huset. We did not have time to tour the Nobel Prize Museum, but we ate at the Grillska Huset located kitty corner from it. This is the most reasonable place to eat in Gamla Stan. The food was awesome and the price was very reasonable. Its like a cafeteria.

8. Boat tour – we did take one of the boat tours because it docked very close to the ship. Our ticket was good for 48 hours and it wasn’t very expensive. This is how we got to the Vasa Museum from the ship. However, the last boat back to the dock was something like 4 p.m. So if you want to stay later or go into town for dinner you can walk into town or take a cab (we did both). The 48 hours was handy because we finished the entire route in two days (its not that its so big, its that we stopped to see things).

Here we rented a car ahead of time from a company called Sixt. I used Kayak to search for car deals. With local insurance (which I would recommend), we paid about $100 for the rental. I apparently wasn’t the only one to rent a car, as there was another car rental representative at the port waiting for their people to check in. I was the only one to rent from Sixt. There are no car rental agencies at the port, but all the local car rental agencies will deliver the car to you at the port and have drop boxes for the keys when you return. A word of advice, if you ask to have the car at 6:00 a.m. – the rental agent will be at the port waiting for you at 6 a.m. We could not get off the boat until 8 a.m. and I felt so bad that the agent had to wait for us. The delay was due to weather and not because of us. We were given a brand new BMW and interestingly enough they gave us an automatic. We can drive manual and preferred it, but they must have thought that since we were American we could only drive automatic. So those who don’t know manual, have no fear!

We opted to rent the car because not many options were available for excursions. HAL basically offered a trip to Berlin, which sounded insane to me, since it was at least 3 hours each way and Berlin is like NYC. Rostock and Warnemunde on their own were pretty boring, as both were part of the former East Germany or USSR. However, a local friend recommended that we visit some of the Northern somewhat coastal towns and I thought that was a good idea. There is really no easy way to get to these towns through alternative transportation. A car was the most efficient way to do this. Apparently, HAL did offer an excursion that covered some of the towns we visited, but from Kiel, Germany (which was actually farther away than Rostock).

We ended up visiting three world heritage UNESCO cities and even though the car rental was expensive relatively speaking, it was way cheaper than an excursion through HAL to Berlin and any other excursion. Gas is easy to find and its more expensive than the USA, but not as much as I thought it would be. Plus the car we had was economical. Also when we visited the dollar was very strong and was just about 1 to 1 with the Euro. By the way you can tell which cities were in East Germany vs. West Germany. If you decided to try this trip – I will let you figure it out.

The countryside is also stunning along the autobahn (no speed limit on their highways – but be smart). When we went there were fields of bright yellow flowers, which we later learned were canola fields for harvesting canola oil. But when in bloom, these fields of gold were stunning.

1. Lubeck, Germany: Gorgeous city! I can see why this is an UNESCO World Heritage City. It is an old medieval walled city and you can still sort of make out some of the old walls. The old gates mark the entrance to town and are very distinctive – it is known as the Holstein Gate. The city is surrounded by a river and there are some river tours. There is a small museum in the Holstein Gate – I am not sure I would recommend it, but it has a really cool miniature of the entire town with walls and the gates from the height of this city. I think that along is worth the time and price of admission. Otherwise it is a stunning town to walk around and wander. We ate lunch at the food stands in the old market square which has beautiful old buildings surrounding it. I highly recommend trying local foods at the stands. Just point to what you want. We stopped and had a coffee and delicious cake at the Niederegger Arkadencafe in the town square. Their cakes and pastries are dreamy. Their specialty is marzipan. It is a great place to pick up some of their marzipan treats for souvenirs.

2. Wismar, Germany: Another stunning little town with some incredible churches. It’s a very small town, we also had a snack here at Café Hegede located in the town square. Their cathedrals are empty and being restored after having suffered great damage in WWII. But they are mostly restored.

3. Schwerin, Germany: We were running out of time, but I wanted to see one of their gorgeous palaces on the lake. We were not disappointed. We got there and only stayed for a short while but we took some amazing photos of their palace, which is now a working government building. We were sad that we arrived just as they closed the building.

4. Rostock, Germany: More modern of a town than the others we visited, but there were some cathedrals and it’s a nice little town, but nothing to special to me. I am glad we drove and visited the other towns. Lubeck was our favorite.