Estonia fits in a week. Tallinn fills the first three days.
Which Old Town walk gets past the coach loop. What a bog morning in Lahemaa costs. Whether the Helsinki boat is worth a whole day. Every tour in Estonia, reviewed.
The tours travellers actually take in Estonia.
Every review →Limestone lanes, a waterfall half an hour out of the capital, the boat to Finland. These carry more travellers than anything else in the country.
1
Return Day Trip Ferry Ticket to Tallinn
Return ferry day trip Helsinki to Tallinn, 2 hours each way, up to 9.5 hours for UNESCO Old Town, shops and comfort onboard.
From · $47
Read our review →
2
Guided Old Town Historical Walking Tour
from $41
3
Day Trip to Lahemaa National Park
from $140
4
City Sightseeing Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $37
5
Private Walking Tour with a Local
from $56
6
Guided Old Town Tallinn Historical Walking Tour
from $42
7
Best of Tallinn 2-Hour Bike Tour
from $36
8
Medieval Walking Tour
from $42
The days Estonia is built around.
A morning inside the town wall, a long table of black bread and smoked fish, boulder coast at Lahemaa, a quarry the Soviet army left flooded, and the ferry that turns Helsinki into an afternoon.
Tallinn Old Town: pick the walk that fits your morning.
All Old Town walks →
Toompea for the view, the lower town for the guild houses, Katariina käik for the workshops. What separates one walk from the next is pace, and which doors the guide can get you through.
- 1Guided Old Town Historical Walking Tourfrom $41
- 2Guided Old Town Tallinn Historical Walking Tourfrom $42
- 3Medieval Walking Tourfrom $42
Toompea, the lower town, both viewpoints
Up the limestone hill while the coaches are still parked, down the Short Leg passage, out through the guild houses to the town hall square.
Passages, plague years and the ghost stories
Katariina käik by lantern, the tale of the monk in the wall, and rooms behind doors you would walk straight past in daylight.
A local to yourself for two hours
Worth it if group pace grates or the questions run long: same lanes, and time to sit down halfway with a coffee.
Helsinki sits two hours north of Tallinn.
The Gulf of Finland is 80 km wide here and the boats cross it all day. A return sailing buys an afternoon in Finland and dinner back in the Old Town; a slower cruise makes the crossing the day out.
Estonian food stopped apologising a decade ago.
Black rye bread, cold-smoked fish, sprats on butter, elk sausage, sea buckthorn in everything. The tastings run through the market halls and the cellar restaurants of the lower town, usually ending somewhere with a tap list.
What a day in Estonia costs.
Every tour on the site, from the cheapest walk to the once-a-trip splurge. Tallinn is cheap for this corner of Europe, and the best walks sit at the bottom of the ladder.
Old Town walks, tower tickets, bar crawls and bike loops — most of what a first visit needs.
Food tastings, the Helsinki return, two hours with a private guide, half-days out of the city.
- 1Day Trip to Lahemaa National Parkfrom $140
- 2Private Walking Tour with a Localfrom $56
- 3Estonian Food, Drinks and History Tourfrom $80
Full days to Lahemaa and the coastal cliffs, private drivers, island crossings.
The Estonia that is nowhere near the town wall.
Half the country is forest and bog, the coast is stacked with boulders the ice left behind, and the empire that pulled out in 1991 left its concrete standing.
Rummu and the Concrete Coast
Rummu was a prison quarry: inmates cut limestone until the pumps were switched off, and the pit filled with groundwater clear enough to see the machinery under it. Paldiski, an hour west, was a closed submarine town no Estonian could enter without a permit. The cliffs at Pakri finish the day 25 metres above the sea.
- 1Coastal Cliffs and Rummu Submerged Quarry Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 97 reviews
- 2Small-Group Half-Day Tour of Rummu and Coastal Cliffs★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 87 reviews
- 3Hidden Tallinn: Soviet Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 76 reviews
Lahemaa: Boulders, Bog and Manors
Lahemaa was the first national park in the Soviet Union, and its shore is littered with erratic boulders, some the size of a small house. Between them sit restored manor houses, the fishing village at Altja, and boardwalks over bog pools that hold the whole sky. Rubber boots come with most tours.
- 1Day Trip to Lahemaa National Park★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 636 reviews
- 2Lahemaa National Park Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 288 reviews
- 3Day Trip to Lahemaa National Park★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 114 reviews
Jägala in Full Flow
Jägala drops eight metres across a fifty-metre limestone lip, half an hour east of the city, and it is the widest natural waterfall in Estonia. Spring melt is the loud season; a hard January freezes it into a curtain you can walk behind. Most trips pair it with the river mouth or the Harju county farm roads.
- 1Jägala Waterfall and Harju County Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 101 reviews
- 2Jägala Waterfall and Picnic Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 42 reviews
- 3Jägala Waterfall and Picnic Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 32 reviews
Tallinn does winter evenings better than summer ones.
All evening walks →
Tallinn Tales: City Highlights Guided Walking Tour
Read our review →
Six hours in Tallinn, and the terminal is a mile downhill.
Cruise days are short, and the port sits below the Old Town rather than in it. These are built around getting back down the hill on time, and each one carries the return leg.
- 01Highlights Shore Excursion with Return TransferThe return transfer to the terminal is part of the booking, so the clock is somebody else’s problem.
- 02City Sightseeing Hop-On Hop-Off Bus TourLoops past the harbour gate, which helps on the day you would rather not walk up Toompea twice.
- 03Tallinn Bike Tour from Tallinn Cruise PortStarts at the water and covers Kadriorg and Pirita, which a two-hour walk never reaches.
- 04Tallinn TV Tower TicketTwenty minutes out of town for the one view that takes in the bay, the Old Town and the forest at once.
When the Baltic weather turns, Tallinn goes into its cellars.
Sea fog in autumn, sleet in March, sunset at half past three in December. The answers are all underground or indoors: a tasting table in a merchant’s basement, a brewery tap room, a workshop with your hands in marzipan or clay, a museum inside a medieval house.
From two spare hours to a full day
A spare two hours6 tours
Half a day7 tours
A full day out16 tours
On foot50 tours- On two wheels7 tours
With a driver9 tours
On your own11 tours- Every tour in Estonia →
How a first trip to Estonia usually runs.
Market halls
Lahemaa
Rummu
TartuThe newest Estonia tour reviews.
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Private 2.5-Hour Tour of Tallinn Old Town in a Spacious Mercedes Minivan
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Enchanted Tallinn: Private Christmas Walking Tour with Piparkook
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Estonian Gingerbread Workshop in Tallinn’s Old Town
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Tallinn singing grounds: story of bees that broke the empire
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