On 7/21/12 6:18 PM, Jeff Gersten wrote:
I am not on face book, a little afraid of using
that, but I do check in here often and like the
rest of you who have commented, I miss the
old crowd as well.

Same here.

We are planning aBaltic cruise in June-July of
2013 on Oceania and have lots of questions
we would like to ask you guys. Such as with
the three days we will be in St. Petersburg, we
only have scheduled one Tour, what is there
to do near the port for the other two days, and
will we need any documents when we are on
our own besides our passports. I sure miss all
the posts.

St. Petersburg is not set up to do on your own. It's not a port where
you will find public transportation.

Plus Russian law is that you need a visa anywhere in Russia except for
St. Petersburg for 72 hours or less AND you use either a ship's tour or
a tour with a licensed tour guide.

We used Alla 5 years ago, and were very pleased with her service. If I
were you, I'd look at the Baltic port section of cruisecritic to see
what folks are saying about guides these days. Once you have a roll
call, you could see if others wanted to share tours.

We are going to St. Petersburg on Constellation this August.

Having been there before, one of my disappointments the first time was
not having nearly enough time in the Hermitage. We were there like 2-3
hours which wasn't nearly enough. To me that is one of the treasures of
the world. I wanted more time there and was willing to give up time we
would have spent at churches or temples.

Charles read about TJ Travel tours in St. Petersburg. After looking at
various options that range from expensive tours with your own guide to
the standard tours, I contacted a rep from TJ. I explained my wishes
and they came up with a great middle option. We will be with a group
the first day going to Catherine's Palace and Peterhof Palace. The
second day we will be with the group for a boat ride in the morning, but
then when the group is taken to the Hermitage, we will get our own guide
for the Hermitage that we can keep for the rest of the day until going
back to the ship. And the increased price wasn't that much more than
for the standard tour. I was very impressed with their flexibility and
willingness to work with my wishes at a fair price. Hopefully their
tour matches their great service so far. We will know in a few weeks.

Tom