St Petersburg: Savior on the spilled blood wednesday visit?

[Lilibelle31]

Hi everyone.

Our ship, MSC Meraviglia, will be docking at St Petersburg on July 10th. It 's a wednesday.

The ship excusrion program offers 2 tours with an inside visit of the shurch, which I really want to see.

However the church is closed on Wednesdays (official church website). A local tour told me that access inside the church was possible nonetheless on wednesdays for group trous of more than 50 people.

Can anyone confirm this ? Has anyone been able to go inside on a wednesday ?

 

Also for MSC excursions do you have to pay anything extra, on top of the excursion price , for visa ?

 

Thanks !

[John Bull]

No personal experience of this issue in St Petersburg, but a couple of times elsewhere in the world (museum in Sevastapol and submarine tunnels in Balaklava) we were obliged to take ship's tour for the same reason. 

Plenty of other examples in different industries - not worthwhile opening a place for insignificant numbers, but big groups make the cash registers sing  

 

The local tour operators almost-exclusively offer tours in vans (minibuses), max 16 passengers, so that operator has nothing to gain by giving you false information.

 

Visits by cruise ships are "visa-free", not "visa-included". 

Your tour ticket, whether issued by the ship or by one of the accredited local tour operators, gets you through immigration without a visa.

No visa = no visa fee 

 

JB 

Edited April 16, 2019 by John Bull