St. Petersburg

We are booked on a Baltic cruise for next summer. Although we are looking forward to seeing the city I am concerned about the stop in St. Petersburg. I am a woman (MtF trans with correct passport) and will be traveling with my wife. Has anyone recent experience visiting SPB as a lesbian couple? If we avoid public displays of affection will we be OK? We are taking a tour for the two days we will be there.

We are a gay male couple and never had any issues traveling in St. Petersburg. We always avoid public displays of affection when traveling. St. Petersberg is a beautiful City, it is too bad that Russia is such a mess politically right now. At this point in time, if we went back, we would not advertise, via T Shirts, etc that we were American.

This is good input. It is easy to fixate on the LGBT issue and not even think of the "American" angle. That is good advice!

We were there last summer on Princess. There were a fair number of gay couples on the cruise, and no one experienced any trouble of any kind. Do not draw attention to yourself, by action or clothing, and your will have a wonderful and enriching 2 day experience.

Thanks for info on your experiences in SPB. I feel better about this.

We visited SPB with Princess. It was just as the homophobic laws were coming in and we did zero public shows of affection including while on the ship. We could not wait for that ship to pull out. We bought excursions from the ship but nothing extra in terms of souvenirs or such. I would not go back not as much from fear of the laws although that is in it but not spending money is another step. As I surf for more cruises, any which go to Russia are nixed from the list as there are so many other options.

Thanks EdmPair for your thoughts. The situation in Russia was something that we took into consideration for our cruise decision. We do really want to see the Baltic cities. A stop in SPB is on every cruise we could take based on our schedule. So the decision came down to getting off the ship or not in SPB. We have decided to do a tour but not buy anything extra as a compromise.

These decisions are always grey for me. Do we buy popcorn from our next door neighbor boy scout when he comes to the door?

I was on the Atlantis Baltic cruise that overnighted in SPB in July of 2012 a few months after the laws were passed in St Petersburg. My buddy and I joined 8 others from the ship in a private tour with a gay tour guide. He (I think) does private tours for any cruisers in SPB, but tailored our two day tour to the highlights of the city and some gay nightlife as well. I do not regret the experience as SPB is truly spectacular and, in this case, we were helping the local gay community with our money. Surprisingly there were several bars/nightclubs in the city and the local authorities seemed to leave them alone. Overall, even on a gay charter, we were all very careful not to draw attention to ourselves and the locals pretty much treated us like any other tourists. For the most part, I felt "safe" but there were a few moments where it was hard to tell if a Russian was eyeing you up a little too much or what. Bottom line, with a mainstream cruise you should be fine as long as you blend in with the other tourists.

I have been to SPB before and found no problem walking around, we did not advertise anything and all went ok/ Are you on this cruise crzergrl

Thanks for the info. No, we are on one in May. I watched the new episodes of "House of Cards" and one episode had an imprisoned in Russia gay US citizen protester in it who was arrested under the new law. Boy that is all I need to see. :-) I don't plan to protest just be a tourist type.