Touring St Petersburg with Costa Magica

[ConnieUK]

Hello,

 

I will be travelling in June with Costa Magica on the Norther Capitals cruise.

 

Could you tell me about your experiences in particular about St Peterburg tours?

 

Did you book one of the Costa tours? Were they good and with an English-speaking guide?

[tenpin]

Hi Connie,

                Take a look on the Costa web site scroll down to 'my costa' and login that will then show you all St Pete's tours.

 

While these do change they are roughly the same & very rarely will the tour be all English normally two sometimes three.

In our opinion these tours are worth doing & you do get quite a lots of good information from the guides.

 

We tried a DIY tour once but really with the language problem we found it very hard work & plumped for Costa next time.

 

You need any my help or have trouble get into Costa log-in I do what I can to help. 

[tenpin]

By the way the Magica is our favourite ship been on her five times, the best English (mainly) bar is the wine bar aft for the evening entertainment. 

[alicat58]

I would not take a Costa excursion in St.P. We went with Alla tours. They have an "open " booking with I think max 16 people. We were the only Costa passengers in out group. All the others were from a Princess ship. I think there were something like 8 ships in on the 2 days we visited. 2 very in the city centre(small ones) and the rest out at the new cruise terminal.

 

If you look on the post info you'll see what various people say about the different companies. We were very impressed with Alla. Our guide was great, spoke excellent English. The driver was not a maniac and got us back to the ship on time. They guarantee that. They get you to most of the sites early and whizz you through past all the long queues.

 

We did a 2 day excursion. They also organise the visa. We were off the ship early both days. They are extremely full days and we were totally whacked by the end of it. I am a bit of a slow coach with walking(not disabled) but managed quite OK. 

 

You can pay in dollars i think. They expect you to give the guide and driver a tip. They tell you all of that on the website. It was totally worth it and cheaper than Costa and in a small group.

 

Riana

[tenpin]

Each to their own Riana,

 

Although it was over ten years ago we did two tours when in St Pete's with Costa both were excellent English was the main language on the coach, lunch was fantastic considering where we were.

 

We have in the past also done a few tours other than Costa's own, & been disappointed. 

 

Hope you are keeping well, back on Favolosa four weeks time.

[Omega1]

We did a superb two day tour with Alla. I cannot praise them enough - small group tour that did far more than any ship tour (Princess) for slightly over half the price. The guide was a delight, she spoke perfect English and nothing was too much trouble. The company’s organisation and communication was first class. As an example, at the start of second day we had a river cruise followed by a visit to the Hermitage. We disembarked the boat in front of the Hermitage at 9.25 and the queues were down the street and round the corner. Someone came up to our guide and handed her our tickets, timed for 9.30 - straight in, no waiting. It was like this everywhere we went, very slick. It is each to their own but I could find a single element of the trip to improve upon.

[angie7911922]

We used a private tour group instead of using the ship's excursions. We went with Anastasia's Travel and had an amazing experience with them. They helped us customize our tour so we could see what we wanted to see and they were in communication with us, right up to our trip. Of course, they took care of all the paperwork, etc, so when we disembarked from the ship everything was ready to go. Our guide met us at the ship and we were off on our tour. Our guide got us through the lines with no waiting, and let us take our time at the different places we visited. She was able to share some extra fun facts about the city that we would not have learned otherwise. It was fantastic.