Season's 1st cruise ship visits Tallinn

TALLINN – The first cruise vessel of the 2019 cruise season, which started its journey from Warnemunde near Rostock on Sunday, visited Tallinn on Saturday.

Coming from Riga, the MSC Poesia, sailing under the flag of Panama, reached the pier in Tallinn at 9 a.m. on Saturday bringing 2,600 tourists to the capital of Estonia. In the afternoon, the 294-meter-long vessel started its journey to St. Petersburg, Russia. The cruise titled "10 Nights in Europe" will end in Copenhagen on May 3.

Most of the passengers of the ship that made the season's first cruse ship visit to the Estonian capital are from Germany, with smaller numbers coming from North America, Italy, Belgium and France. In all, there are people of 54 nationalities on board the ship.

The beautiful spring day saw the cruise passengers get familiar with Tallinn's Old Town as well as visit other tourist sights of the capital city. 

The next cruise ships are set to arrive in Tallinn on Tuesday, when the vessels Viking Sky and Astor with a total of 1,250 passengers onboard are scheduled to berth here.

The listed Estonian port company Tallinna Sadam is expecting altogether 339 visits by cruise vessels that are to bring approximately 600,000 cruise tourists to the Estonian capital during this year's cruise season that will begin on April 27 and end on October 19. 

The busiest day in terms of the number of ships will be July 11 when there will be six cruise ships in Tallinn at once with a total of 8,000 cruise tourists. There are significantly more days with five cruise ships in Tallinn at once and on a few days, the number of cruise passengers visiting the Estonian capital may reach 10,000.

In 2018, cruise ships called in Tallinn on 338 occasions bringing a record 635,000 visitors here.