St Petersburgh Excursions

[Reggietours]

Hi Everybody,

 

Just booked our first Baltic Cruise on the Arcadia 31st May this year. The main port of call for us is St Petersburgh I was hoping that with all the vast knowledge out there I could have some recommendations for a two day tour. I am aware that P&O do their own tours and Cruise.co.uk have similar tours slightly cheaper. I also read somewhere that you can book with local companies but I am a bit wary of this. Any recommendations would be helpful thank you.

[CruiserBruce]

Welcome to Cruise Critic!

 

If you come over to the Northern Europe portion of Cruise Critic, here:

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/116-northern-europe-amp-baltic-sea/

 

you will see 3 or 4 commonly recommended private vendors for St Petersburg. All get great reviews and lots of customers.

[Reggietours]

Thank you so much.

[John Bull]

Hi Reggie, and welcome to Cruise Critic,

 

Plenty of local tour operator on the forum linked by Bruce. All provide visa-free tours, same as the ship. And all have exceptionally good reputations, no need to be wary

You'll see that they (all?) use 16-seat minibuses, so much better than the coach tours offered by cruise lines and at similar or lower cost.

 

One slight difference with P&O compared to other cruise lines..

In St Petersburg as well as various tours in large coaches I believe they also offer small-group tours in 16-seat minibuses.

Those minibus tours will be similar to the independently-booked tours. If the price is comparable (I doubt it but don't know) they're worth considering.

And at least one local operator will be unable to offer you an independently-booked tour because they're contracted to P&O.

 

I'm surprised that cruisedot's name wasn't automatically redacted from your post, because naming travel agents is a no-no on Cruise Critic. But in any case they don't operate excursions - they're merely an excursion booking agency like Viator, cruisingexcursions.com etc, they sell the same tours that you can book direct with the operators.

Sometimes a booking agency is useful but in St Petersburg they're unnecessary, just an extra cog which could lead to communication difficulties, delays & errors, especially with the visa-free arrangements in St Petersburg.

 

JB 

[Reggietours]

Thank you so much, apologise for the hiccup. First time I have used the site.

[donaldsc]

We did a 2 day tour w Alla Tours.  It was excellent.  They even modified the tour a bit as we wanted to see the Great Synagogue and it wasn't on their visit list.

 

DON

[ontheweb]

3 hours ago, donaldsc said:

We did a 2 day tour w Alla Tours.  It was excellent.  They even modified the tour a bit as we wanted to see the Great Synagogue and it wasn't on their visit list.

 

DON

 

We did the same thing. After I put together 10 of us from our roll call, one person asked for that synagogue. Alla's response was fine if no one objected.

 

When our tour started our guide, Viktoria, (who now owns SPB tours) asked if there was anything extra not on the excursion itinerary we wanted to do. I mentioned that I had read that the subway was very interesting. She took us on the subway for a couple of stops having the driver meet us.

[dogs4fun]

For those of you familiar with Toms Port Guides, I see that he has now added his Saint Petersburg guide to his free PDFs. Lots of useful information - we used his port guide to Lisbon several years ago and it was an invaluable source of information - spot on.

Link to Saint Petersburg guide:

https://www.tomsportguides.com/uploads/5/8/5/4/58547429/st-petersburg-russia-port-guide.pdf

Lots of information and tour recommendations here:

 

[Toofarfromthesea]

11 hours ago, Reggietours said:

Hi Everybody,

 

Just booked our first Baltic Cruise on the Arcadia 31st May this year. The main port of call for us is St Petersburgh I was hoping that with all the vast knowledge out there I could have some recommendations for a two day tour. I am aware that P&O do their own tours and Cruise.co.uk have similar tours slightly cheaper. I also read somewhere that you can book with local companies but I am a bit wary of this. Any recommendations would be helpful thank you.

 

Those local companies that you are wary of are some of the most high-quality reliable excursion companies you will find at any port anywhere.  Their ability to do 'vise-free' tours depends on it.  Don't listen to any propaganda to the contrary from any cruise line.

[trosebery]

Ditto on the above advice: the independent tour companies in St. Petersburg that you'll see recommended here are all very professional. Best I've seen in any port. I was a little wary myself on our first visit and therefore booked a small group tour with one of the larger companies (SPB), but after seeing how easy everything was, we felt confident enough to book with a smaller company (Red Sun Tours) for a personal, private tour on our visit last summer. . . and it was even easier this time around! Go read the Master Thread linked to above and try contacting some of the recommended companies to see which will work best for you.

[dogs4fun]

21 hours ago, Reggietours said:

I also read somewhere that you can book with local companies but I am a bit wary of this.

We have never booked with the cruise ship on our four visits via ship to Saint Petersburg - we booked with Alla Tours and everyone in our group had a fantastic time. We are visiting again in September on X's Reflection -  most in our small group will be touring with Alla Tours again (except for myself as I now have acquired a Russian visa and prefer to DIY).

10 hours ago, Toofarfromthesea said:

Those local companies that you are wary of are some of the most high-quality reliable excursion companies you will find at any port anywhere.  Their ability to do 'vise-free' tours depends on it.  Don't listen to any propaganda to the contrary from any cruise line.

Absolutely TRUE! Check-out the tours offered by the independent operators - I provided a link in a previous post.

[Reggietours]

Hi everybody

 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed answers to my post regarding St Petersburg. I'm glad to say through your answers I have booked a 2 day excursion for my party of 4 with Red Sun Tours.

 

Thanks again.

Reggietours

[Moose12345]

On 1/18/2020 at 6:29 PM, dogs4fun said:

For those of you familiar with Toms Port Guides, I see that he has now added his Saint Petersburg guide to his free PDFs. Lots of useful information - we used his port guide to Lisbon several years ago and it was an invaluable source of information - spot on.

Link to Saint Petersburg guide:

https://www.tomsportguides.com/uploads/5/8/5/4/58547429/st-petersburg-russia-port-guide.pdf

Lots of information and tour recommendations here:

 

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by Moose12345
Forgot to add response

[Moose12345]

Thank you for the VERY informative link. I found this very helpful.

I was already considering this tour and now I'm sure that we will be booking it! 🙂

[catz0026]

I second the thanks! very useful information!