ftmill

Yes we are overnighting on the silhouette in Russia.  We are adverse to big tour buses so we are going with the Anastasia

tours because they have smaller vans and they put folks together.  We are only two and do not want a private tour.  Thank you all for your input.

PS  I on a tour recently where the ships' tour bus did not return on time and after waiting 1 hour we left. 🤐

The tour drove the passengers  to the next port

17 hours ago, dabear said:

• We did a Baltic cruise on Eclipse one year ago . we found the highlights to be in SPB where we strongly recommend  an independent tour operator . We took a 2 day deluxe tour with Alla tours although there are 2 other popular tour operators with a max of up to 16 persons (see trip advisor). It's difficult to dyo as things are spread out and non group visas are expensive. Our other favorite port was Tallin, Estonia which you can do on your own. The old town center in a walled city is not far from the port. It's important to find out where your ship docks in Stockholm as some locations are about 2 hours from the center of town. fortunately our cruise docked in town.

I took your advise and checked TripAdvisor and booked Anastasia for SPB.  I am looking at the SPB tours for Sweden.

17 hours ago, ipeeinthepool said:

We also highly recommend using private tour operators especially in St Petersburg.  We used SPB-tours dot com, be careful not to use the fake SPBtours dot com.   We used SPB-tours in SPB and Stockholm and were very pleased with both tours.  The private tours are much smaller groups, cheaper and often get cuts to the front of the line.

Thank you.  I booked Anastasia Travel before I saw this.  fingers crossed.

17 hours ago, 1025cruise said:

You might want to check the ports of call forums for the ports for your cruise.

Thank you for your quick response.  Where do I find the ports of call forum for my cruise.  Celebrity Silhouette May 16, 2020 out of Southampton Uk

For anyone who has done the cruise before (or going next year) what excursions do you recommend?