Iceland-Helsinki-Baltic Countries

August 2016

The central part of our trip was an eight-day, Lindblad / National Geographic cruise to the Baltic countries on the 102-passenger ship, National Geographic Orion.

We created our own pre-trip extension by first flying to Iceland for four days to visit some of Cheryl’s cousins.  We then flew to Helsinki for two days and then took a ferry 50 miles across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn, Estonia.  We stayed three nights in the  charming Old Town of Tallinn, one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe.  The cruise portion of the trip began in Tallinn (see the map below) and ended in Copenhagen, Denmark.  We made many stops along the way including Riga, Latvia and Gdansk, Poland, another beautiful, old, (restored) city.  In Gdansk we visited the Solidarity Museum and the site where World War II began when Germany attacked Poland.