Shore Excursion: 4-Hour Tallinn Guided Sightseeing Tour

We were on a cruise. This port is small. We easily found our guide OUTSIDE the port gate (5 minute walk). Took air conditioned van to quaint part of town seeing Catherine's palace (much smaller than in St Petersburg, of course), ruins of old church and waterfront. Then walking tour of upper town with large manors and cathedrals with photo stops then a steep walk down with some steps through the dividing wall into the lower town where the merchants lived an worked. Upon completion of tour in lower town, time to eat/shop and 15-20 minute self walk back to ship. Our guide was very friendly.”

We enjoyed the beautiful town of Tallin. Even though it was crowded with tourists from several ships, we had an interesting tour, and enjoyed staying in town for lunch and shopping before walking back to the ship.”

This was a wonderful experience! Our guide was so amazing! Old Town was so beautiful. Such beautiful sights to see!”

Our tour was excellent. Our guide was enthusiastic about showing us around her city, even though it was raining. We would definitely recommend this tour. Much cheaper than through the cruise line.”

Excellent tour in a small group. We had a passionate and knowledgeable guide who made the whole experience very worthwhile. Highly recommended.”

Great tour, our tour guide Dimitri was excellent would highly recommend this tour.”

Tallin is a wonderful city and the combination of bus and walking was great. Be prepared for a lot of walking on sometimes difficult terrain. This is not the tour for anyone who has trouble walking and once the 1 12 walking tour is completed you still have another 20-25 minute walk back to the ship. Our guide was very knowledgable and we learned a lot about this great city.”

The tour was very interesting and the tour guide was very pleasant. We saw some interesting sites. The only thing I would suggest is the the tour guide be a little more assertive as we spent almost 1 hour waiting for people on the tour to get out of a gift shop.”

Good overview of Tallinn. Be warned that this tour DOES NOT drop you back off at the cruise port, but it is a 15 min walk so those with disabilities covering about 2 kilometers, please keep this in mind as you may want a taxi. The tour starts with a coach ride and around the city with a good overview, the walking portion through the town center starts at the top of the hill and goes downhill from there, my 9 year old was easily able to handle it.”

A good afternoon seeing the sights of Tallinn. You need to be able to walk some distance though. Our guide was very informative and spoke good English. We didn't realise we were not being dropped back at the Port though.”

Very good sights and thorough. Guide was very good”

Very enjoyable, informative and worthwhile tour.”

We specifically said we were arriving at the Ferry port and bot the criise poet it took 1 hr and a taxi ro finally find our grp manager who was angry with for being so late. It wasn’t her fault or ours. Viator agould have provided directions from the Fwrry landing to the cruise port. The rour its lf was adequate but, in my mind, a group of 24 is not a small group. I have used Viatpr around nd rhe world. This one did bot stack up well”

Time wise can be a lot longer instead of just ending at 1:30 pm.”

We came from a cruise ship for our Baltics trip with two adults and one 3 yr old. Before this guided tour, we had one in Helsinki, one in St Petersburg and one afterwards in Stockholm. Rita was our guide at Tallin and this was a group of roughly 15 to 16 people from several different cruise ships. Let me start with the positives and tell you why I rated this experience low. Rita was very good at laying out historical perspectives and explain different building styles and cultural importance to us. This she beat all the 3 tour guides we had on this trip. And her view of Russia/USSR of course was in sharp contrast with our St Petersburg guide who we listened for 2 days right before arriving at Tallin. This strong Estonian centric view somehow also led to a very strong and negative opinion about my innocent question. During the tour, I saw several souvenir shops selling coco clocks and this puzzled me as we were no where close to Black Forest of Germany which I just visited in May. She bashed out as she was somehow offended by the question when I asked. She said she had no idea why stores were selling ambers or coco clocks made in China. At the end she said they were all owned by Russians. Here is why I rated the experience low. However, as a tour guide you have to be attentive to people’s needs. This often means bathroom breaks have to be worked into the tour. We had one at the beginning but then once we got to old town Tallin midway through the tour, half of the group wanted to go, she was reluctant to point out where we can take care of the business. One lady was so desperate that she just wanted to give up this tour and go back to the ship. Afterwards, we started losing people on the tour left and right. And folks would leave without telling her. The experience just didn’t click. Also, we were expected to find the shuttle bus ourselves outside of the old town in a part where we didn’t visit before. Then the shuttle bus would take us back to cruise ship (or you walk 10-12 mins). It started to rain towards the end of the tour and she chose to explain how we got to the shuttle bus for more than 5 mins in a heavy rain when she had umbrella but not all of us. Well, right across the street there was a crossing where we could have done the same with roof over our heads. We walked more than 5 mins in heavy rain and decided to take Uber back to cruise port at the end (Uber was usually half price of what local taxi would charge you)”

The bus tour portion lasted only 1 hour and 10 minutes, not 2 hours as described on the Viator's website. The bus tour did not drive around the old town, see the towers of wall, the Stout Margaret or the Tall Herman. Instead, the bus dropped us off by the Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and spent 40 minutes waiting for everyone take turns going to the bathroom. The guide was very lethargic. While walking the old town, people started to leave the tour early since the guide's talk was so uninterested. In the end, those remaining few people told her to cut the guided tour short. Asked her just tell us how to walk back to the Cruise Line shuttle bus pickup point. Her direction was not very clear. We had to figure it out ourselves. It was not far from where we ended the tour, but she was not even willing to just take us there! Overall a great disappointment !”

Too much time wasted by the guide on this excursion. The trip left half an hour late to start as there were four cruise ships in port that day. We were waiting for people to show up. When it finally got going there was still too much wasted time as the tour leader as he didn't know how to organize a tour group and lead it to the items on the agenda. When we finally arrived at the old town.,more time was wasted outside a souveneer shop when I finally had enough. I said to him that I had paid for a tour of the best of Tallinn and I had not seen very much. There were people in the group who's ship were leaving early in the afternoon who needed to be back on board and were very angry. The tour guide finally got his act together and picked up the pace and we saw a bit more. Unfortunately some people had to leave the tour and get back to their ship. He promised to extend the trip to make up for the lost time. Did I get my moneys worth on the trip. NO. Skip this tour and go to the old town and wander around. You can pick up a guided tour of the old town for less money and it will be much better than what we got.”

We had trouble finding the tour guide -- the instructions indicated that we had to walk out of the port area. Finally we found the guide just outside the exit gate of the cruise terminial. She explained that they hadn't updated the instructions ! We enjoyed the first 2 hours of the tour. When we got to the upper town and started on the walking tour, our first stop was the Russian Orthodox cathedral. Our guide told us we could go in for 5-7 minutes. When we came out, we didn't see her, or any of our group. We waited and watched for her for an extra 20 minutes, but never did see her again. Luckily I had picked up a town map as we left the port, so we were able to find our way to the lower town and back to the ship. Several others on our cruise loved Tallinn -- unfortunately our poor experience left us very dissapointed. Our excursion was on June 28, 2018”

We had Theo as a guide and it was a rushed tour and at the end he left us at the center at the Plaza and told us how to walk back to the ship, that it was a long walk. He did not take us inside of any place, it was not pleasant at all and on my print out it is included all necessary admission tickets and pick up and drop off at the cruise ship and it was not 4 hours, I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS EXCURSION, take the Hop ON Hop OFF bus it is a much better deal. This was very expensive for what Viator charge for it and do not deliver.”