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St. Petersburg Cunard Excursion "St. Petersburg Explorer"


rfauss
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We are considering the above Cunard Excurion on Aug. 18th, the 2nd day in SP. Looks like there is plenty of time to be on our own exploring. Wondering if anyone has been on this particular excursion and if you liked it. Thanks, Ruth and Charles

Edited by Host Hattie
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We used SPB tours,excellent, with smaller buses and groups.A lot cheaper than ship.All the major tour operators there have a good reputation.Be careful of pickpockets if you wander off on your own.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We have done privately organised tours with TJ tours twice now and recommend them highly. I am not sure about "St Petersburg on your own" - either legally or practically. My understanding is that the only way you can do anything "on your own" in SPB is if you have a full visa obtained by yourself before you leave home. The visas obtained for you when doing either a private shore tour or a ships tour are dependent on you staying with the tour guide at all times. From a practical point of view - SPB is a huge city with long distances between the major touristy places . I don't know how practical it would be to do anything much on your own even if you had the appropriate visa. Underground trains info is all in Cyrillic.

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Here's an information about visa by a private company, nevertheless it's pretty accurate: http://www.russiavisa.com/visafreeentry.htm

Getting a regular visa is easy but it requires some time. Usually you send a passport to a private (state licensed) company who will then do all the paperwork for you. Then you will pay a fee for the visa and one for the services.

 

I spent a week in St. Peterburg (this ist the correct transcript from Cyrillic). In general the city is very easy to navigate and many tourist sights are within walking distance. The only exception is after midnight when the bridges are raised up to let ships navigate through the city from and to lake Ladoga. Also, the metro has signs and network maps in English. http://www.metro.spb.ru/en/

 

If it weren't for this visa nonsense (which Russians reciprocally have to endure when they travel to western countries) I would recommend you to go on your own, but under the actual circumstances it's easier to do it with a tour operator.

 

Enjoy St. Peterburg, it's a wonderful place in August. Try to spot one of the feline wardens of the Hermitage!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitage_cats

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Shuffleboard Dude

 

Your comment about the Hermitage wardens made me smile. There was a light hearted report on BBC news recently re the football World Cup where they were teaching Russians to smile at foreign fans.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

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We have done the Cunard St Petersburg Explorer twice now, the last time being two weeks ago on QE.

Is a great way to see the city, the first stop is at St Isaacs Cathedral where you get around 50 minutes to wander around on your own. The coach then takes you close to the Church of the Spilled Blood where you have around 1 hour 45 minutes on your own.

Back to the coach and then you are taken to Nevsky Prospekt near to Alexandrinsky Theatre where you can continue exploring. You get around 3 and half hours here. It only takes a few minutes for the coach to drive between stops and saves walking.

If you like exploring on your own then this excursion is great, plenty of time to get around and do your own thing.

You are given a map with all the main places highlighted.

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We have visited St Petersburg on three different cruises. On the first cruise we took the tour organised by the ship, on our second cruise we took a private tour for eight of us and on the last cruise we took a private tour for the two of us. As part of a group of 35 people we didn't enjoy the ship organised tour very much at all. The private tour for eight was very good but the private tour for the the two of us was the tour we enjoyed the most.

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The visas obtained for you when doing either a private shore tour or a ships tour are dependent on you staying with the tour guide at all times.

This has been a much-discussed topic on the CC St. Petersburg board and on TripAdvisor, with much confusion and a vast amount of misinformation. I can only speak as of 2012, and the situation may have changed since then. But at that time, at least, under an official exception to the usual visa requirement for entering Russia, cruise ship pax visiting St. Petersburg on either a private shore tour or a ship's tour did not need to "obtain a visa" at all (nor, contrary to common belief, was there such a thing as a "ship's visa" covering pax on ship-sponsored tours). The exception was available only to customers of a licensed tour guide, and one of the requirements was indeed that the visitor had to be accompanied by the guide at all times.

 

This latter requirement was not rigidly adhered to. We used Alla Tours for a two-day custom-designed tour for two, including a self-booked evening performance ("Eugene Onegin," fittingly enough) at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. The evening's "guide" was simply a driver who picked us up at the pier, dropped us off at the theatre, and collected us after the performance for a return drive to the ship. He did not "accompany" us into the performance. It appeared that this was routine practice. But I have no idea if things are different in today's political climate.

 

Let me add that we thought our guide from Alla Tours was terrific, and the cost (both the actual tour and the opera tickets) was a fraction of what the equivalent "ship's tours" would have cost, not to mention being tailored specifically to our wishes.

 

If you do book with Alla or one of their competitors, however, be aware that your fluent English-speaking guide may not be the innocent young woman she appears to be. A friend of ours with connections to the U.S. intelligence community commented to us that there is only one foreign language school in Russia that teaches its students to speak flawlessly unaccented American English, "and it ain't Berlitz."

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