Red October Question

[travelynn]

Montanna,

We will be traveling with Red October in August. Which of their suggested restaurants did you like, and which did you not care for? We will be on Royal Caribbean Jewel. Is that one of the ships that does not allow box lunches off or is the the government that does not?

 

Lynn

[westlab]

<<Do not plan to book a lunch with a Russian family.......>.

 

I disagree. Lunch in the Russian home was one of the highlights of St. Petersburg!!!

We were able to let Red October know what foods we did not want served -- no unwashed fruits/veggies.

The time spent in the Russian home was wonderful! Our hostess loved to talk, so it kept our guide busy, translating. We would definitely do this again.

[peggyann]

Make sure you have the correct email: redoctober@peterlink.ru

 

We usually heard back from Laura within a day or so. Sometimes her assistant would email in Laura's place if for some reason Laura was away. If you have heard nothing, I would assume that you have the wrong address. Try again.

[aqua]

We just returned from the June 19 Constellation. I plan to write a review as soon as I catch up on my laundry, but I wanted to answer the Red October questions. We toured both days with Red October and had a wonderful time. Our guide, Irina, who teaches English at the university, was outstanding. Celebrity did say in the cruise news not to bring food off of the ship in St. Petersburg, but we honestly did not see that information until we returned from our first day tour. ( I think they also said that in every single port of the itinerary....) We brought sandwiches, fruit and bottled water for ourselves and the guides. We had no problem getting off of the ship and the food seemed to be well received by the guides. We ate lunch the second day at "Our Petersburg" restaurant, where the food was very good. I cannot say enough positive things about Red October. They pay people to wait in line for you, so you always go in first. We felt a little guilty walking past all of the Celebrity passengers at the Hermitage! Irina was an excellent guide and we were very glad that we decided to use their services.

[nny92825100]

Irina was our guide when we went to the folklore show in the evening. Our guide during the day was Dmitri and I felt he was much more knowledgable about history and spoke English very well, even down to the slang. He is a linguist with a passion for art and history.

 

Irina was good about present day things, while Dmitri went into the history and why things were done they way they were. Truthfully both contributed a lot. The second day I took a tour through the ship to Peterhoff and had an 18 year old gal as our guide. She did not know any history, but she sure told us how to grease hands to get your drivers licence, get into schools and universities, and how her brother got out of doing his mandatory 2 years in the military. All the guides were good at making us see Russia as it was and is. We did not think of asking Dmitri about the present as we were so absorbed in the history. When Irina talked about the times now is when we realized we had not heard it earlier in the day.