St Petersburg - looking for tour companions 15/16 May 2010

[Sealegs39]

Cruising on Arcadia 9-23 May and have been researching excursion options for St Petersburg. Found very good value 2 Day Complete package with Alla Tour for just USD300pp but need to find other cruisers to make up minimum number of 12. Is that you? Found some excellent reviews of Alla Tour in forums and keen to avoid crowds and queues of ship's excursions. See their website for full details of the excursion and contact Katya if you want to join us. They organise visas for you. Hoping you will contact them so we can make this tour happen!

[lulu48]

I would look for a ROLL CALL for your cruise & see if others are willing to share
It is a bit late most people book well in advance for private tours
Good luck SPB is beautiful

Ask Alla to also refer people to your tour

[halfdomegnome]

My husband and I are looking at a Northern Europe cruise in 2011 which will include an overnight stop in St Petersburg. We'd like to get off the ship for at least one of the two days docked. I've checked out the Russian Embassy for visa requirements and I'm getting confused. It appears that a visa is required but it looks like we have to have a tour guide as a sponsor to get a visa. So I 'googled' St Petersburg tours and at some point in my surfing found some prices ranging from a few hundred to well over a thousand dollars. Has anyone taken cruised to Russia and figured out the visa requirements? And the cost of the tours?

thanks so much....

[lulu48]

If you are doing a ship's tour or a private tour with a licensed guide you do NOT need a VISA
If you want to wander off on your own then you NEED a visa
As I understand it
Your cruise line documents will be the invitation.
If you just want to go off for a few hours in the evening it may be worth it just to hire a guide for the night.
There are several companies that have evening activities Alla, Red October, SPB tours etc
We had booked 2 full day tours with SPB and the cost was about $300.pp (average for all) if we wanted to go out to dinner they charge $30 per hr for the driver to wait for us, P/U & drop off at the ship but that could be split with several couples

[halfdomegnome]

Thank you for the clarification. This looks like it's going to be an interesting trip...starting with getting from Heathrow to Southampton.