Walexcursie Helsinki: hop-on hop-off stadstour door Helsinki

The headset information was good Waiting for the bus was long The route was very big and we were able to see many things

Start of Tourist season, excellent pick up at the Cruise Terminal, it was cool and some rain, however, the buses had their canopy roofs tied down. Buses were little slower than the anticipated time, so we built in more time between hop on and hop offs, the Old Town is in the heart of the City, Good to excellent day.

Firstly, we took the bus and hopped off at important places to cover the city highlights. After covering the main spots, we took one full round simply to listen to on-board commentary. The commentary for Helsinki HOHO tours was far better and informative than what we had heard in our other Baltic HOHO city sightseeing tours. We took the last bus to reach back to port as our ship was leaving at 3 pm. Good things about HOHO tour: Location of the HOHO bus on cruise port terminal and courteous staff. The bus is always present on the terminal before passengers start to de-board from the ship even if ship has arrived early. Improvement area: The frequency of buses could be improved. We had to wait for 30 minutes at each spot for getting the next bus. For people who have limited time in Helsinki, waiting for 30 minutes may amount to waste of time.

Love using this service to explore new locations.

We arrived in Helsinki on Holland America cruises. If you're arriving on a cruise, it's important you read and understand the chaos that is occurring in Helsinki with the two competing Hop-On, Hop-Off bus companies. Sadly, the booking with this company Stromma is NOT the one you want to use. Viator and Trip Advisor have confused the situation by calling both of them The Red Bus and other confusions. This company does NOT have access to the cruise port secure area, so passengers need to walk a long distance to find the bus. Both companies have employees touting in the port area, both dressed almost identically. Neither company could identify the voucher from Viator and both had to make phone calls to find out if it was valid on their service. Stromma finally admitted that they would honor the voucher after walking back and forth between both groups of bus company employees! The buses for THIS service are not as clean, and they run 50 less than the other company. And most bus stops do NOT have an employee selling tickets which means long waits at each stop while the driver does it. Viator was NO HELP with this situation and continues to advertise these two services as EQUAL when they are NOT. THIS one should be avoided at all cost.

There are not a lot of things to see in Helsinki. The Hop on Hop Off bus met us at our cruise port and took us into the city. We opted to ride the whole tour before getting off to see the Rock Church, Senate Square and to walk around the city center. It was nice to be on our own to see different parts of the city.

Our main issue was that the buses only go to each stop every 30 minutes. This meant that we had to be at stop 1 by 2:30 to get back to the ship in time ship was leaving at 4 pm. This was city sightseeing' bus, there were other hop on hop off buses by 'city tours' that ran every 15 minutes. You can get a ticket right off the ship for that. Waiting so long for a bus is a problem when you don't have a lot of time to start with. The water front area not far from stop 11 and stop 1 had some quaint outdoor shopping and excellent seafood grilled right on the waterfront for reasonable prices. We enjoyed stopping in the 2 cathedrals one at stop 1, one on the far side of the water front. Also, there is a free toilet inside city hall which is the blue building across the street from the outdoor shopping area by the water front. It's hard to find free toilets.

Great experience! Don't miss the Church of the Rock!!

Nothing special.