Onshore excursion in St Petersburg. Do we have to book with Celebrity

[smtcan]

We had absolutely no problem in St. Petersburg when taking a tour with SPB. We got off the ship early and the border officials accepted our paperwork. We were a family group of ten, some British and some Canadian passports.

 

I don't know much about Viator, except that they use local companies in ports. My advice would be to cut out the middle man and deal directly with one of the major Russian companies already mentioned. These companies can add you to a small group arranged by them, or provide a private tour. Obviously a smaller group will be more expensive, so the advice already given to check the roll call for your cruise to find others interested is good. You need to book a few weeks ahead so they can process the paperwork and email it back to you.

 

We checked the web sites of several companies and found their offerings were similar. They responded quickly to emails and we just chose the one we felt best addressed our concerns. We had four children in our group and wanted to ensure that we would not be in a museum beyond their attention span. The guide provided was a former teacher who had no difficulty keeping the children engaged as well as giving the adults all the information we wanted.

 

Sheila

[wwwfla]

We used SPB for four of the five Baltic stops and they were excellent! Arranged through groups on our Roll Call about 3 years ago. The pricing for using them on 4 stops versus the ST. Petersburg only was substantial and greatly enhanced the whole cruise.