Cruise & Maritime Cruises Answers

We cruised to the Baltic last year with Celebrity and opted for a two day tour of St Peterburg with SPB and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There were 48 of us (all met on the CruiseCritic Roll Call) and were divided into groups of 16 for the Mini buses. Each group had its own tour guide. We saw all the well known sights, which included a river tour, where we all met. The cost was $290, which included the cost of the visa, all transport and a lunch each day. Ship excursions were more expensive and only had one day tours, which tended to overlap each other. Be aware that you have to pay in Roubles, to use the toilets. The cost is very small, but make sure you have some on you. Souveniers can be paid for in Euros, US Dollars and Credit Card.

We used Alla tours last August and they were excellent. We saw far more things than the other guests on our dining table who used the ship's tours. We were a small party of 12 (don't worry you don't have to organize your own group) and so we were able to move around the city/countryside more easily than the larger coaches. Also Alla seemed to have some sort of arrangement which allowed us to be taken right up to the entrances/later collected from there, and entry before many queues. Again this allowed us to have two very full days with little walking.

We used the ships excursions in St Petersburg and considered them good value for money. The Perterhof trip was a full day and included a lovely lunch in an old palace hotel on return to the city and a city tour that took in lots of the sights and had loads of photo stops. We didn't do the ballet or folklore show as we thought we'd be worn out after a full day out (we were) but the people who did go out for the evening seemed to enjoy the folklore show more than the ballet. Our second day out was Puskin and Catherine's Palace, also very enjoyable.

The ships tours are always a little overpriced, but what you see is 'a must'. The quality of the tours is very good.

Booked a half day walking tour with RCCL last year which cost EUR 23.00 and that was very good value for money, but we were only there for the day. The coach would drop you off at a certain point with the guide, and you would walk to pick the coach up again at a later point.

Under Ask a Question is Find an answer and type St. Petersburg which seems to get the responses rather than St.Petersberg in the blank line that starts Or by keywords.... and there you will see a number of reports from others who have been there, some using the cruise ship excursion others using Denrus and Alla now two well known tour operators for this area...Bill

We booked our two day's worth of trips with our cruiseline and were very pleased. However, the caveat is that it was many years ago and the choice of 'external' tour providers was no way near as good as it is today. Value for money? I can't really answer as such apart from to say we were very satisfied . We covered all we wanted to see from a half daytour of The Hermitage to The Catherine Palace and many points in between incl. The Peter Paul Fortress. Three absolutely unmissable points of interest.