Every year SAS airlines runs a special in December where they send an email each day and for that day you can buy tickets to the named city at a very special rate.  The trick is you have to travel in winter!

So we considered of all the places SAS flies what would be unique and give us the opportunity to see a lot of different things.  After studying the map and lists and talking to friends we decided on Tallinn, Estonia.  I know, sounds like a strange choice but look at the map from Tallinn it’s a relatively short trip to Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and even St. Petersburg, Russia!   Thus the option to investigate a lot of new places.

The flight ended up only a little over $500/pp rt.  A deal at anytime of year.  We worked with Sissel at Borton Overseas.  She put together all of our hotels, transfers, ferry rides, rental car and some short day tour guides.  In the end we opted to spend time in Tallinn, drive down to Riga, Latvia and take the ferry for a day trip to Helsinki, Finland.  Here find our story and photos.

We started off flying non-stop from Seattle to Copenhagen, Denmark and then switching to Estonia Airlines for the short hop to Tallinn.

 

Tallinn, Estonia    Riga, Latvia   Helsinki, Finland

We also got to sample many different restaurants – medieval themes, Russian, local flavors.  Throughout the week the food included bear, duck, venison and reindeer!  These was washed down with local beers and a great Russian vodka – Russian Standard Platinum.

The return trip was the same flying but gave us a few hours to learn a little about Denmark in the rather large airport in Copenhagen.  Denmark gets my vote, a large can of beer was cheaper than a Coke :).

All in all, four countries, four currencies all with different conversion rates, bitter cold and some beautiful places and amazing history shared with family.