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!

I was deciding between the two and decided on the balkans instead. Looking forward to seeing what I missed (and what I could plan for my next trip to Europe).

We'll certainly be hitting the Balkans on our next Europe trip. I'm thinking something similarly ambitious as this, going Slovenia to Greece with the in-between countries.

That's doable (especially if you have 10-14 days). We did Slovenia to Montenegro in a week and were happy with our pace.

I remember that for a quite long time AY BCN<->HEL flights were operated by Iberia, so I think it might been possible that even prior the switch to DAT LT you wouldn't have got a genuine Finnair experience.

In order to actually get to Europe, both my girlfriend and I had to take positioning flights to Chicago. I was in Southern Connecticut visiting family for the Fourth of July, which meant that the most convenient airport to get to was White Plains (HPN). Thankfully, American Airlines maintained a robust schedule out of HPN on the holiday weekend, including a 6:00am flight directly to Chicago O’Hare (ORD). This was also the only flight with any award availability at the time of booking; 15k miles + $19 for a first class seat booked through Alaska Airlines. Though I was not particularly looking forward to the 6:00am flight, it gave my girlfriend and I a full day in Chicago and would hopefully mitigate the possibility of delays that crop up later in the day.

My girlfriend had already flown into Chicago the night prior, taking a flight from Baton Rouge (BTR) to Chicago O’Hare (ORD) via Dallas Fort Worth (DFW). I booked the trip for her for only 6k AA miles + $5.60 in economy, and her Platinum status—helped by the light travel day—bumped her to first on both legs, including a 787-8 on DFW-ORD. Not bad at all!

The Flight:
For me, the journey to the Baltics began with a very unwelcome 4:30 am alarm to get me up in time for the 6am flight from White Plains to Chicago O’Hare. After a quick drive down Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway, I was curbside fifteen minutes before departure.

First Class boarding was called a few minutes after 5:30am, and passengers were ushered onto the tarmac and up a set of air stairs to board flight AA3751, operated by a 22-year old Embraer E170 aircraft with tail number N774JG.


I had selected seat 4A for the two-hour hop West. The seats on the left side of these planes are arguably the most coveted in AA’s fleet as they are single, providing both window and aisle access and considerable recline.

The five passengers in the first class cabin were greeted with a pre-departure beverage of choice, which set the tone for a really strong service from the lead flight attendant. Given the hour, I stuck with coffee.

We pushed back early and with minimal traffic at this early hour, blasted off into the orange-tinged sky toward Chicago.


The journey itself was unremarkable, though we were treated with some fantastic views of the Windy City as we made our approach to the airport.


I do want to acknowledge, once again, the quality of service provided. The FA working the first class cabin was constantly in the aisle to ask passengers if they needed anything. I’ve found the service on AA’s regional subsidiaries, particularly Envoy, to be consistently a cut above what you’d find on mainline. Needless to say, I was well caffeinated hopping off the plane.

This was ultimately an unremarkable flight, which I suppose is a good thing when you have a flight to catch later on in the day.

Love a good view of downtown from the air. Never gets old.

My flight from White Plains arrived prior to 8am, while my flight to Barcelona was departing a 6:40pm. While I certainly enjoy some time to relax in the airport lounge prior to a flight, 10 hours is far beyond my limits. Given that my girlfriend had never actually been to Chicago other than during layovers, it made it a no brainer for me to meet her downtown to do some sightseeing.

What this meant for me was hopping off the plane, taking a quick walk to the transportation area, and taking a 30-minute ride on the Blue Line into the city to rendezvous with my girlfriend who spent the night with a friend in the Ukrainian Village area of the city. This was my first time taking public transit to or from O'Hare and I was impressed at how easy it was. But I also spent 4 years in Los Angeles for undergrad so my perception of airport transport is admittedly quite skewed.

Once we met up, we hopped back on the Blue Line to head closer to the Riverwalk and grab some breakfast. We settled on Goddess and the Baker, a Chicago-area chain that I had been to before and thought was pretty decent. I ordered a breakfast platter, while my girlfriend got some toast. Both were unremarkable.
Once satiated, we began to do some sight-seeing. Unfortunately, for the first few hours, we were saddled with our luggage. Prior to our trip, I learned that, unlike in many airports in Europe, there was no luggage storage on the airport premises or adjacent to the terminal. I certainly wasn't going to attempt to short check my bag, so were stuck with our luggage until the Union Station bag storage opened at 10am.


Funny seeing this Lithuanian flag downtown given where we were heading on this trip.

At 10am, we made our way to Union Station and parted with the $40 that they charge for two bags for those not traveling on Amtrak. Having shed quite a bit of weight, we continued to walk around with renewed vigor.





With the afternoon marching on, we decided to do a cruise around Lake Michigan. For $32.50 per person for an hour, we thought that this was well worth it, providing some really great views of the city as well as some nice historical context via the speaker system.




About midway through the cruise, we were treated to a fleet of army helicopters flying over us for a military exercise.

By the time the boat tour ended, it was already almost 3pm so we headed to the airport via Uber.

Having been to Chicago recently, I recognise the places in your photos 😊