With St Petersburg off the cruise map for the foreseeable future, cruise lines are having to be inventive and look at new ports to keep their Baltic’s Cruises interesting for their discerning and culture hungry guests.

As I’ve been to St P a few times and had often said I’d do a Baltic’s Cruise that didn’t call at St Petersburg, I was delighted when the opportunity of this Fred Olsen Balmoral Cruise to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Sweden came up..

We sailed from Rosyth (train to Inverkeithing or bus to Rosyth then take a taxi to port) and visited Liepaja, Saaremaa, Tallinn, Stockholm (overnight in port), Visby, Riga and Klaipeda on a 13 night cruise.

One thing to mention was that we had a lot of time changes, with Sweden being one hour ahead, but everywhere else two hours ahead of UK, but it was nice to have extra hours on the way back. I’ll look at the ports in more depth again but will choose just one photo and tell you a little about each now.

The soviet influence was very evident in Liepaja, not just in the old naval base and former military camp, but in the wide streets, the concrete flats and the Orthodox Church. I’d have loved to stop and have a good poke about the ex military base, maybe even visit the prison, but that can keep to another trip. A shuttle bus ran between the town and the port and there was quite a bit to wander round and explore yourself if you didn’t want to take a tour

Saaremaa is an Estonian island and popular holiday area. Where the ship docked there was a small cafe. The little village is 2.5km away and a pleasant walk, there’s an honesty bar and an honesty craft stall and a pretty harbour. On the way we all met the enterprising young man, Oliver, selling painted stones and bottled water for €1 each. The ship did offer a tour or more a bus into the nearest town which allowed you 3 hours there and this was said to be fantastic. I did the ships tour around the island in the afternoon which was really enjoyable and I got to see the meteorite crater!

Tallinn is one of my favourite cities, it never disappoints, I used the ship shuttle as I’m not keen on the walk in, then I meandered up the big hill to the viewpoints, passing the worlds most expensive public lavatory, and worked my way down slowly taking lots of new photos for painting, visiting the Churches, stopping in the main square for some refreshments and a spot of people watching, before making a few purchases in the local deli and buying a new scarf in the much depleted market.

Stockholm. ‘Normally’ on a Baltic’s cruise you’d overnight in St Petersburg and we instead did an overnight in Stockholm. I got the go city pass and highly recommend this if you want to do the museums, it includes most except ABBA, I also used it for the hop on boat and bus so I saved quite a bit. I love this photo of the ladies in the allotments at Shansen, I’d go there again but would allow much more time, though I did spend ages at the farm & Nordic animals, as I wanted to see a moose but would leave that bit out in future.

Visby. The ship put on shuttles into town and if you don’t want to do a tour or walk in I’d recommend that. I did the hop on hop off bus, and while it was nice to see a bit of the island they only drive round the outside of the old town and it’s the main attraction. There are 2 old ruins, a very impressive cathedral, botanical garden, sheep sculptures/seats everywhere, lots of shops, bars, cafes and alleyways with more cobbled streets to explore and reportedly the best preserved city walls in Europe

Riga. We visited on a Monday so unfortunately the museums were closed. I joined one of the free walking tours and learned how the city wall was now mostly encased in buildings as many had used it as a support wall. I was fascinated by the mythical animals sculptures in the play area beside the cathedral, there’s lots of unique buildings and architecture, a town square (created by knocking down old buildings the foundations of which are still evident in the cobble stones) I also got a tourist map and walked round ticking off the sites and my favourite coffee stop was here in the Black Magic Chocolate Shop, expensive but even visiting the bathroom was an experience and a box of chocs came home for hubby. It’s an easy walk from ship to town, but again there are cobblestones!

Klaipeda our last port was all about the sculptures. It was a short but not well signposted walk into town and the tourist map handed out at the port was my guide in searching out the artworks, the mouse is exceptionally cute. We had a wet day here and a coffee shop lured me in with the promise of a blossom latte, they ran out of those so I settled on a white chocolate latte and pistachio eclair which was to die for. This was a great port but other than the sculptures right at the port you really had to look for things and there was a lot of streets closed as they were being relaid, this just adds to the adventures really, I enjoyed poking around and ended up in a residential area with a great supermarket, I love a nose round to see what’s different!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick whizz around the Baltic’s. A really fantastic culture packed cruise, we had 9 port days with no sea days in between so we were all ready for 2 sea days on the way home with those time change extra hours in bed.

For this cruise I travelled solo as art tutor on Fred Olsen Balmoral, which as a smaller ship is able to access some pretty unique ports. I try to take unusual photos and it’s been difficult to choose just one per port for this post