Possible trip to Norther Europe in summer. Anybody taken those big ferries in the Baltic and North sea like Stena or Silja line? What should I know?
Yes. I took one from Stockholm, Sweden to Tallinn, Estonia and back. One of the Tallink ships (Tallink also owns Silja).
It’s basically a small cruise ship. There’s some shops, a few restaurants, a few bars, some cheesy on board entertainment.
I think it took like 16 hours to get from Stockholm to Tallinn. The ship departed at like 5 PM and arrived the next morning. Rooms ran the gamut from 100 sqft to 300+ sqft depending on how much you want to spend. We ate dinner on there the night we sailed to Tallinn and breakfast the morning we were almost back to Stockholm.
It was during the winter so the sea was pretty rough the night we sailed back to Stockholm. The boat rocking was very noticeable since these aren’t those mega Royal Caribbean ships.
The passenger makeup will mostly be from the countries the ship is traveling between. Our boat was mostly Swedes, Estonians, and Russians.
I wouldn’t hesitate to take one again. You’re only on it for a night or two if a round trip. Basically, board, eat dinner, have a drink or two, go to sleep, wake up at destination.
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Agree with everything @The_GMAN_Retired said.
I took One Stockholm to Tallinn and back, and one Stockholm to Helsinki and back.
It was like a small, slightly sad, floating Vegas.
Lots of very drunk Nordics, Balts and Russians. They’d do like a 48 hour booze cruise/day trip to different capital thing. I think part of the appeal was something about the normally very high alcohol taxes not applying when they were outside territorial waters, so the drinks were cheap(er) than on land. Some of them were wearing name tags with boat company/vessel and time of departure for return journey, because it was anticipated they’d get/continue to be hammered at the destination and need to be poured into a taxi to get returned to the dock for the return trip.
Earsplitting, bad dance music and at some point some terrible karaoke.
We had fun because we were a group of students in our 20’s. I doubt I’d find it as amusing in my middle age, but it’s fine for getting from point A to point B.
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I just found my reservation email. We were on this ship: Cruise ship Baltic Queen
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It wasn’t that rowdy on my two trips. The Stockholm to Tallinn route a bit more so than Tallinn to Stockholm. I think there were more Russians on the first leg. It was likely due to it being the first week of January and it was cold as fuck in both places, especially Tallinn. I could definitely see 20-somethings doing that 48 hour non-stop party during the summer.
In before someone: well I took a ferry out of Lofoten once but didn’t complete the sailing because I had to jump off it and swim 3.8 Km to shore to where I left my bike….
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Admittedly, my experience is dated, and the two trips I took were quite different.
I was studying in Sweden at the time, on an exchange program during law school.
The one to Tallinn, I and my US law school friends on exchange with me were doing a somewhat responsible version of the booze cruise. We had a free weekend, so we went to Estonia for a day to see the sights. We drank consistently both ways - not enough to get white girl wasted, but we could certainly overlook minor downsides, we all knew each other so could overlook each others’ minor indiscretions, and both directions on the boat were effectively back to back, so it was one big party.
The one to Helsinki, we were with a bigger group of multinational exchange students who were all en route to Russia for an excursion to St Petersburg and Moscow. Stockholm to Helsinki, then a week plus in Russia, then back to Sweden. The trips were separated, we were sober-ish because we were trying to be good on the way there, tired on the way home, and amongst student peers that we dimly recognized might be professional colleagues someday, so we should kinda sorta behave ourselves.
The two experiences were notably different. The truth as I experienced it is probably somewhere between those two poles. I’d be interested to see how I experience it at this point in my life.
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Only took a short hop from Helsinki to Tallinn, a little under 3 hours. Mostly locals taking advantage of duty free drinking and shopping. No issues, just a little crowded since only the common areas were available as no one could book any cabins. Also, it was raining so no one used outdoor seating areas which made crowding worse.
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You know where to take this @#%$% 