DIY tours- getting off the ship

[Belfast Taxman]

Regulars may know we are cruising the Baltic next August on Explorer.

We are arranging a three day private tour with a local tour provider in St. Petersburg and we have a great looking itinerary for all three days. It is action packed and does require a fairly early start each day, including 90 minutes after our scheduled arrival time on day one (although this is, I think, quite flexible as we would back on the boat from Catherine’s palace by 4 pm if on time). The other days are due to start at 10.00am.

My question is, can you get off the ship when you want if you have arranged private non-Regent tours, or are there any restrictions? We will have 72 hour tourist visas.

Our last day is a full day tour of the Hermitage due to end at 4pm. Sail away from St.P is 6pm. The tour includes transport to and from the ship. Do these times look sensible?

any thoughts on other cruise ports - we are also thinking of going private for Ghent and Bruges from Zeebrugge.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Belfast Taxman

[papaflamingo]

I have only done St.Petersburg on Royal Caribbean.  We also had a private tour.  We had no problem getting off the ship. The tour company (I assumed they are arranging your visas), will email you the visas.  Make sure you print them as you'll need them to leave the ship, along with your passport of course.   Since you are getting off 90 minutes after arrival, and at 10 am on day 2, I doubt you'll have any problem at all.  It can take a few minutes to go through customs as they are quite "intense,"  so plan some time for that.  

[Hambagahle]

We were in St Petersburg on the Mariner.  We also had a private tour guide (just for us, not for a group) plus a car and driver.   We had normal tourist visas and had no problem getting off the ship when and as we wanted to - once of course the ship had been cleared on arrival.

 

We were lucky in that the Mariner docked up the river and not in the cruise port.  so we were able to get off in the evenings and just wander around the neighbourhood.  You cannot do that in the dockyard- or wouldn't want to I suppose.  It probably also helped that we both speak some Russian (and can read it...)   We were supposed to have been in the dockyard and our guide and car went there to collect us on the first morning...which resulted ina longish wait for them to get to where we were docked!!

 

Our guide was expensive but she got us into places when they were closed to the public.  In two cases - the Chinese palace and Catherine's palace - we were accompanied by the Directors on our tour which was a lot of fun.  They were very nice people.  We visited the  Gold room at the Hermitage when it was also closed and that was a huge pleasure.

 

if your last stop is the Hermitage and you are docked up the river you can walk to the ship in 20mns.  If at the dockyard - theoretically it will take about that to drive but the traffic is terrible and unpredictable...  Allow an hour at least.  You do not want to miss the ship!

[RachelG]

We have been to St Petersburg twice on Regent.  Once we did all private tours, the next one day private tours and the rest ship tours.  We were docked up the river, very near the Hermitage the first time and at the dockyards the second.  Pray that you are docked on the river.  The dockyards is far away from anything you would be interested in seeing and it adds up to an hour each way to a tour because traffic is terrible. 

 

You will be able to get off the ship as soon as it is cleared.  The first day, it takes quite a long time to get through customs and immigration, but after that, it is very quick. We got the tourist visa through the tour company that we hired and couldn't just go walking around on our own.  We had to stay with the guide.  We are from the US, so that rule may be different for non-US citizens.  I am not sure.  I do know that when we went to eastern Russia and had to get a regular visa, it was much more difficult with tons of paperwork to fill out, but we could wander wherever we wanted.

[ClefsDor]

We did a Crystal cruise earlier this year to St Petersburg and we were at the dockyards. We did a private tour with a guide and driver for just my sister and I for 3 days with TJ Travel - highly recommend them and we covered so much more ground being on our own. We cleared immigration much quicker than I was anticipating, literally took only a few moments each day and whilst we had the visa provided by the cruise company it was never looked at even once so I assume we could have exited and wandered around on our own if we had wanted to. I'm not sure how they would regulate to make sure you were with your guide when the area you are supposed to meet your guide is after you've cleared immigration. We found the drive time from the dockyards to central St Petersburg to take roughly 25 minutes. We met our guide each day at around 8.45am - I would check with your guide about your start time as 10.00am sounds a little late to me?

[taxare]

Everyone has responded to your main question re: St. Petersburg. In other ports you may be delayed getting off the ship until some of the Regent excursions go first. On our British Isles cruise last month they gave different types of group numbers to get off the ship in several of the ports. It was never more than a half hour or so after the first excursions went, but it is possible that you may not be able to disembark as soon as it is cleared in every port. By the way, we loved St. Petersburg and we had a great time on that cruise!