St. Petersburg and Berlin tours

[FoxyTerrier]

These are 3 days of my Noordam review. Great cruise!!!!

 

July 25, 2004

St. Petersburg, Russia day 1 We had pre-arranged 2 full days with Red October tours so we got up very early, a notice the night before said room service might be delayed due to so many people getting off the ship early. We went to the Lido for a light breakfast, and were first inline to get off the ship at 7am. Just as planned Olga from RO was there to meet our group of 7. We had the BEST guide Alyonna aka Helen. I can't say enough about Red October!!!! We saw so much and the RO guide was able to go right to the front of most long lines. We opted at the beginning of our tour to add a boat trip for $15 - also well worth it. Back to the ship at 5pm - totally exhausted. My mother and father opted for dinner in the room and son Lido so it was DH and I alone in the dining room. We saw a younger man (40ish) dining alone so we invited him to join us.

 

July 26, 2004

St. Petersburg, Russia day 2 Today we got to sleep in a bit and met our guide at 9am. We had another full day and learned so much about STB. Got back to the ship around 4pm today. While everyone else napped I wanted to watch the sail away from St. Petersburg. I proceeded to the Upper Promenade around 5:25. I was amazed to see a HUGE line of people (several hundred) trying to get through immigrations and security back on the ship. All aboard was 5:30 and it was obvious we weren't going to make it. I ran back to the stateroom for the camera was no one in our group would believe this. It turns out all the HAL tours (which was a lot) returned at the same time just before 5:30. It took over an hour for all these people to get back on the ship which meant we were late leaving STB. I felt really bad for some of these people that had a hard time standing in such a long lines - many had canes and walkers. This is the web address for Red October: http://www.redoctober.spb.ru/RedOct1280x1024/index.htm - I would recommend them for several reasons, cheaper than HAL, much smaller groups and as a result got back earlier and avoided the long lines returned. Later I had heard the same thing happened for those that went out for the evening in STB. I would also recommend Alyonna who also goes by Helen.

 

 

July 30, 2004

Warnemuende, Germany We had prebooked a Berlin tour with the following company:

http://www.berlin-stadtfuehrung.de/english.htm Again this was a great choice. We had an excellent driver and Klaus the owner of the company was our guide and well worth the money. It turned out to be only 93 Euros each for 7 people and HAL was charging close to $300 a person. We had a new MB van saw far more than other I talked to on the ship the next day. We arrived back at the ship around 7pm just in time for dinner. The HAL people returned around 9:30 or 10pm and found the extended Lido buffet had run out of food.