Howdy! My girlfriend and I just got back from a wonderful twelve-day trip to Europe with stops in Barcelona, Helsinki, Tallinn, Vilnius, Riga, and finally, Copenhagen (with a day trip to Malmö), and I couldn't be more excited to share this journey with the FlyerTalk community and put the spotlight on what I think is one of the most underrated destinations in all of Europe.

Introduction: Though I’ve focused most of my Europe-travels in its Western region over the last few years, my girlfriend and I have both long had a desire to visit two of the more-Easterly regions of the continent: The Baltics and The Balkans. For this trip, we had to choose between Mediterranean heat or Nordic chill; sun-drenched ruins and rakija, or misty forests and rupjmaize. Both regions have so much to offer, so the decision wasn’t easy; but given our ambitious itineraries, the perceived ease of travel within the Baltics (thanks to airBaltic) compared to the more rugged logistics of traversing the Balkans ultimately tipped the scale in the Baltics’ favor.

While the Baltics technically consist of just Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, our convoluted routings to and from Europe (which I’ll elaborate on in the next section) made it worthwhile to spend some time in Barcelona and Helsinki at the beginning of the trip, and Copenhagen at the conclusion. I wasn’t complaining, either, as I was eager to return to Barcelona and Copenhagen and show my girlfriend these two wonderful cities, as well as check out the often-overlooked capital of Finland.

Booking Flights: Targeting a July trip to Europe and using American Airlines’ coveted Systemwide Upgrades is almost an oxymoronic statement; it requires extreme flexibility and quite a bit of searching on AA.com. Whenever something decent came up, there was always a catch—like only one upgrade space available. Luckily, I have an unusually high tolerance for positioning flights and layovers—and, even better, a girlfriend who (however grudgingly) goes along with my often circuitous routes. In mid-March, I got lucky and was able to simultaneously use two Systemwide Upgrades on American Airlines’ once-daily service from Chicago to Barcelona.

As we don’t live in Chicago, this ORD-BCN segment required positioning flights. We were coming from different parts of the country, so I booked my girlfriend on Baton Rouge to Chicago O'Hare via Dallas Fort Worth arriving the night before for just 6k American Airlines miles + $5.60 in economy, and myself from White Planes to Chicago O'Hare the day of using 15k Alaska Airlines miles + $19 for a first class seat. Not the best redemption for me, particularly as I was all but guaranteed the first class upgrade had I booked myself in economy, but there was scant economy availability to be had out of any NYC-area airport and cash prices were sky-high for the July 4th weekend.

On the way back, I was able to find double upgrade space to instantly confirm two Systemwide Upgrades on the seasonal direct flight from Copenhagen to Philadelphia. This was ideal, as it was the closest departure airport to the Baltics with a direct flight back to the US on AA metal, and any itinerary originating directly from the Baltics would’ve been pricey and routed us through London, where upgrade space at the time back to the US was non-existent.

I was a bit nervous about getting from Barcelona to the Baltics. It’s a long way to go, and I wanted to be sure to avoid losing a full day to connections. So I was thrilled to find a nonstop Finnair flight to Helsinki, taking us to the doorstep to the Baltics. I was able to snag this flight for 12.5k American miles + $19 in economy. About six weeks out, the operating carrier switched to DAT LT. This was a disappointing change as I had never flown Finnair and was keen to try it, but it just wasn’t worth changing to a connection through Madrid or London.

To get from Helsinki to the Baltics was simple: ferry to Tallinn. We booked through Eckerö Line, for only $32 per person, though there were multiple companies operating the route that we could have chosen for the same price.

Traveling between the Baltic countries required a bit of creativity. Logically, it would have made the most sense to work our way South and go from Estonia to Latvia to Riga. However, prices and, more critically, flight times (especially to Copenhagen), forced us to go out-of-order. AirBaltic does a phenomenal job of covering the region with direct flights, and I was able to book Tallinn to Vilnius for $63 each, Vilnius to Riga for $39 each, and Riga to Copenhagen for $43 each.

The final routing, occurring over the span of roughly two weeks, looked like this:


Enjoy this trip report!