tours

I am going to St. P on oriana and see that many passengers have booked tours with local tour companies. Having been on Youtube and seen the standard of driving in Russia, If the local tour bus is late ,for whatever reason, will the boat wait for the return of the passengers.

It is my understanding that if you are on an independent tour then they will not wait. If on a P and O tour they will wait.

I know others do not agree, but if I went independently I couldn't relax. A dearer way of doing it, and also no leeway in what you do, but its better for me. Only my personal opinion of course!:)

I am going to St. P on oriana and see that many passengers have booked tours with local tour companies. Having been on Youtube and seen the standard of driving in Russia, If the local tour bus is late ,for whatever reason, will the boat wait for the return of the passengers.

No it won't wait but cruise ships are the life blood of these tour companies and their reputation depends on getting you back to the ship on time. We were stuck in a landslide in The Ukraine last year and I cannot praise our local guide enough for the steps he took to ensure that we got back to the ship on time, a considerable time before the P&O tours. He was fantastic.

The ship's tours are not for us I'm afraid. We stopped doing them after the poor quality of the guides in some ports, the large numbers and the constant stopping for loos / to meet up etc. Local tours give us a much better feel for an area and it's what we do all the time now. We just aim to be back at the ship well before we sail and always take our Horizon with the number of the port agent etc..... but you should always do that anyway.

Indiana - I agree with you. I know there are good deals to be had with local tour companies but I would spend the whole trip worrying about getting back to the ship if a car or bus broke down. We have had some superb trips with P&O and some excellent guides. For us, it's a ship's tour every time - as you say, it's all down to personal choice.

We did a two days St Petes tour with TJ Travel. It was excellent and we saw way more, for less, than the ships tours. There was a parade in town that day which they knew about and took detours to avoid the bottlenecks. We were back on the ship 2 hours before departure so there was leeway for any possible delays.

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I tend to do a mixture of both DIY, ships tours and independent ones. I must say that, so far, the independent ones have been excellent, especially in the Caribbean. You see more, do more and get a much better feel for the country. We ate local food in tiny roadside cafes and it was wonderful arriving back at Oceana in "our own" speedboat!!

We took the 'small group' P&O tour in St Petersburg - 14 of us in a minibus with guide and driver. It was a 2 day tour and was really excellent with an excellent local driver who whizzed in and out of the (awful) traffic and a local guide who really knew her stuff and spoke fantastic English. On our visits we often came across Alla Tours and people who went with them and they have a very good reputation and were also obviously thought to be very good and reliable.

The large coach tours are not for us, but one problem of a minibus was that the windows are smaller and unless you are sitting next to the window, you can't see out very easily so it's not easy to look at the buildings which you are passing by en route.

St Petersburg is wonderful to see, but there are oh so many crowds of tourists!! Like us!!

Our experience of St P, albeit 2003, and we were there for 4 days, was that in certain parts it was almost like the old Wild West.

We were on a fully organised tour out of the UK with Travelsphere and on one tour, a walking tour in the centre, the local Tour Guide almost abandoned us in the face of Drunken Sailors, fortunately our UK Tour Guide rallied us, we we scared I can tell you.

Ok times may have changed and we are cruising there next September, but we will be using the ships tours, for the reason that the Ship will wait for a Ships Tour but not a local tour.

We use local tours when we feel they are safe and or in an emergancy a taxi back to the ship I available.

Not trying to scare anybody it was more of an "experience" post.

We did Alla 2 day tour in July. No worries about getting back to the ship. They do the furthest away sights the first day, and do the nearest attractions to the ship the second day. They guarantee to get you back. We were 12 on the tour, all from the same ship. Excellent driver and guide. Saw so much more, jumped queues, and learnt so much! Nothing to worry about!

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