If a customer was to ask me about shore excursions with an Itinerary to St Petersburg, Russia, I would typically always say to the customer to book the shore excursion through the cruise line as this will be easy and include the visa though them too. However, I have just been speaking to a customer who has recently returned from their Cruise & Maritime holiday and advised me she booked her own independent shore excursion.
I was very surprised at this and asked her why she didn’t book anything through the cruise line and was told that there was limited availability and the tours are like the bog-standard tours. The customer said they paid £1000 for 2 adults and 1 child over 2 days which also included the visas. This covered a private guided tour from the ship and included the 2-day tour. They visited many sites outside the typical areas of St Petersburg and 1 of the adults 1 blind. So the tour guide really looked after her and visited areas of interested where she could feel rather than look, such as a monumental library where a lot of the St Petersburg building work is displayed giving customers the chance to feel what St Peterburg looks like.
One of the customers wanted to see the underground to get a sense of what it looks like. So the tour guide took her to view this whilst the others stayed in the private vehicle. The tour guide was very professional and informative with all the local knowledge giving my customers an authentic touch. The tour guide would chop and change parts of the package so they could stop at several places as they went by so they could view and hear the locals and buy local gifts. To be honest, this is some of the best feedback I have been given from St Petersburg.
St Petersburg is not generally somewhere I would recommend getting off to do your own thing due to the visas being so expensive. But it just goes to show it can be done within reason and please check the supplier before booking just to make sure they are legit.