Private tours

[Aubrettony]

We are a couple, in our mid 60's from Toronto, Canada, looking to share private tours, specifically in St. Petersburg. We would be interested in also having some Jewish Heritage aspect to the tour. Two touring companies have come highly recommended to us, who offer just such tours. One is Milk and Honey and the other is Anastasia. Milk and Honey also arranges the visas, and Anastasia may as well, although I have not confirmed this for sure.

There have been a great many people on this cruise who have already signed on to the tours offered by Dancing Bear. I am a little concerned that it seems like an assembly line, cookie cutter operation, but would not rule it out if anyone could give me some personal recommendation and tell me that they or people they know were happy with this company and the tours and service this company offered.

Someone has posted that there is a prison in Tallinn. We would be interested in going to see this as well and would gladly share a taxi with others who are game for something different.

[LHT28]

Some of the other guides will do Custom tours

SPB-Tours will work with you to do the sights you want to see

 

I would join your Roll Call If you have not done so) see if anyone is interested in a small custom itinerary

[BenMurphy]

Hi

we used Dancing Bear a couple of years back (when we were on Marina) .

They did all the paperwork and we had an amazing three day small group tour with just eight people. I can highly recommend them. Have a look on Trip Advisor.

And do liaise with others on your roll call.

 

Have a great trip..............................we did.

Regards,

Josie

[Paulchili]

As Lyn mentioned - any tour (SPB, Alla, etc) will gladly arrange and customize a private tour for just the 2 of you if you wish. The only difference will be the cost. The cost of the tour is "fixed" but if it is for 8 people you split it 8 ways; if it is just the 2 of you, you pay for the whole thing.

Your call.

[Pet Nit Noy]

As Lyn mentioned - any tour (SPB, Alla, etc) will gladly arrange and customize a private tour for just the 2 of you if you wish. The only difference will be the cost. The cost of the tour is "fixed" but if it is for 8 people you split it 8 ways; if it is just the 2 of you, you pay for the whole thing.

Your call.

 

Actually, my husband and I have discovered that there are limits to the amount of customization the biggies will do for a party of two. We've previously spent 3 days in St. Petersburg and, for our upcoming port call, we contacted SPB for a wholly customized itinerary. With the exception of arriving at Peterhof in time to see the Cascade Fountain start up, there was nothing we wanted to see that would have been part of a standard published itinerary. SPB referred us to a newish company, White Nights, that was started either by a friend of the SPB owner or a former SPB employee. I'll report back after our experience with White Nights. (White Nights does get a high rating on Trip Advisor.)

Edited March 9, 2015 by Pet Nit Noy

[Paulchili]

Actually, my husband and I have discovered that there are limits to the amount of customization the biggies will do for a party of two. We've previously spent 3 days in St. Petersburg and, for our upcoming port call, we contacted SPB for a wholly customized itinerary. With the exception of arriving at Peterhof in time to see the Cascade Fountain start up, there was nothing we wanted to see that would have been part of a standard published itinerary. SPB referred us to a newish company, White Nights, that was started either by a friend of the SPB owner or a former SPB employee. I'll report back after our experience with White Nights. (White Nights does get a high rating on Trip Advisor.)

 

Good to know.

Things must have changed as their business got better. Back in 2006, when SPB didn't even exist, Alla was willing to arrange a custom private tour for just the 2 of us. Now that business is much better, it is easier for them to do "regular" tours with perhaps just little custom changes.

PS The person that was our guide with Alla in 2006 was Viktoria, who since has started her own very successful company SPB (she was just contemplating it then :D).

[Leejnd4]

FYI, we used Anastasia a few years ago in St. Petersburg, and they were AWESOME! We hooked up with another couple onboard and did a private 2-day tour for the four of us. It was truly the highlight of the whole cruise.

 

They will take care of your need for a visa. You actually don't need a "visa" per se...all you need is to print out your tour ticket (which they will email to you) and you simply show that when exiting, and you are free to head off with your tour guide. There is no additional cost, and no need to buy an expensive visa. You only need a Russian visa if you are going to tour without a licensed, registered guide -- which Anastasia is.

 

We completely designed our own tour. I researched St. Petersburg for months in advance, and selected where we were going to go, and how long to stay at each. We managed to get to every place on my list, and even added a couple of sites when we found ourselves with extra time. We ended up seeing twice the number of sites that others saw with the ship tours, for less than half the price.

 

Somehow our guide also manage to bypass lines. We saw many of the larger tour companies (such as Denrus), as well as the ship tours, at the places we went to...they were often large groups, standing in long lines. We walked right past them to side entrances and waltzed right in at several key sites, including the Hermitage.

 

I would recommend them in a heartbeat to anyone traveling to St. Petersburg.

[ChatKat in Ca.]

We used Denrus tours. We paid them via US website and our tour was completely customized. Our guide named Marina spoke very understandable English and was even flexible enough that when we ran early made a few phone calls to adjust our itinerary on the go. That gave us access to one of the sites visited all by ourselves. We were more than pleased. We had a group of 10.

[Leejnd4]

Hi ChatKat! Long time no see! :D Still out there cruising around, I see. Nice to see you on the boards!

[Pirouette]

We used SPB Tours (ViKtoria) for a four city package on our 2012 Baltic cruise. We joined on to a group of 8 so there were 10 in total. It worked well. We did the ship's tour in Gdansk because it included a visit to a nearby concentration camp. The guide was the son of two camp survivors. He made it a very moving and personal experience. We do not usually do ship tours, but this one was worth every penny.

[bitob]

SPB did a fabulous job -- both in St. Petersburg and Berlin.

[sammiedawg]

For Gdansk, Gydnya we used Andrew Falkowski and he is brilliant! A nice man, not a real chatty man. We visited the concentration camp, he toured us building by building, he really knows the history. We had a walking tour of Gdansk afterward and he drove us by the resort city of Sopot on a very rainy day. We were a party of eight, an extended family group. His price was very reasonable for a full day tour.

We used SPB in St Petersburg, the same sized group. We had a terrific guide who related well to our young people. They customized what we wanted to see over two days. I highly recommend Victoria and her company. Her husband runs the Berlin office.

Edited March 9, 2015 by sammiedawg

[Leejnd4]

FYI, we learned from our guide (a lovely young woman named Irina) that many of these private tour companies draw from the same pool of excellent guides. I don't think there are many guides who limit themselves to just one company...although there may be some who tend to work mostly with one specific one.

 

Either way, I've heard nothing but fabulous things about the most well-known private tour companies in St. Petersburg. And we couldn't have been happier. :)

[IFlyHarder]

OP - you mentioned that you would like a guide who can provide a tour with some attention to Jewish-oriented sites. We tend to look for the same thing (we try to visit a synagogue/Jewish museum in each place we travel).

It's always nice to have a Jewish-themed tour from a fellow Jew, so one thing we sometimes do is to contact the local Jewish Community Center.

There is a large, active JCC in St. Petersburg. Their website is jew.sb.ru. Might be worthwhile sending them an email. They might be able to connect you with someone who can give you such a tour.

[arima22]

We used SPB-Tours, Viktoria, Last August. Excellent! They do have a Jewish Heritage tour listed for both St. Petersburg and Berlin. We did not do that tour, but we did have 2 couples with us that asked for a special stop at a Jewish synagogue - the first time we tried, it was the Sabbath and an armed guard turned the group away. Came back on Monday for the tour.

[Excited English]

What date is your cruise?

We are going on Marina on 21st August.We have been to St Petersburg before and are in the middle of putting together a three day private tour including places of Jewish interest

If interested in joining the two of us let me know and I will let you have copy of our tour so far