Evening at Catherine's Palace -

[JPH814]

We are considering booking the Evening at Catherine's Palace during our visit to St Petersburg in July. The description mentions a 'Champagne reception' as part of the tour, but not a dinner. Our friends - who took a similar excursion on a Crystal Cruise - had a dinner included as part of the evening.

 

Does anyone know if this excursion includes dinner? Or do we need to have an early dinner before leaving the ship?

[MrsWaldo]

I'll be interested to hear comments about this tour too!

 

We did a Tower of London by night with SS and really loved it.

 

I'd also like to know if you have done both day and night is it worth a second trip?

[Sadie Lady]

We did this excursion in July 2011. It was a wonderful excursion with our 3 busloads being the only people in the palace. There were different musicians throughout the rooms as we toured, and then we had the concert in one of the grand halls. We could not tour the grounds. Dinner was not included and it was a late evening so you should probably eat before going. If I remember, they offered dinner in the MDR earlier than usual because of that. The only negative was the traffic getting to the palace. It took us close to 2 hours to get there. Coming back to the ship was a much shorter trip.

[Emperor Norton]

We are considering booking the Evening at Catherine's Palace during our visit to St Petersburg in July. The description mentions a 'Champagne reception' as part of the tour, but not a dinner. Our friends - who took a similar excursion on a Crystal Cruise - had a dinner included as part of the evening.

 

Does anyone know if this excursion includes dinner? Or do we need to have an early dinner before leaving the ship?

 

I did this in the summer of 2012. There was no dinner (The ship offered earlier dining hours, also when I got back to my room I had a plate full of nibbles waiting for me). You start off with a vodka reception, do the tour, get champagne while listening to music/watching dance, then back outside for a Disney Russia scene then off to the ship. Besides being able to photograph the amber room another benefit of the tour is that you are the only group there (or at least when I went that case the case - not so with Peterhoff).

[Buccaneer_1]

Purely of historical interest but we did this with the Pride in 2006 and did have the dinner after the main palace tour and before the tour of the royal vehicles. You will not be missing anything if they were to use the same caterers. Awful food and wines the complainers on other Seabourn posts would be horrified by. However, do not miss the exclusive tour Seabourn put on because it looks too expensive. Our tour being the only group there and being a little sister it was awesome. Friends on Seabourn did it on their own a couple of years ago much cheaper but with the huge crowds during the day and with a quick rush through the rooms where we had the place to ourselves. You should see the photos I took in the amber room with the place to myself for ten minutes.