On 7/22/2012 7:28 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:00:51 -0500, Janet Wilder
wrote:

On 7/21/2012 5:18 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 doing a Baltic next August. We were in St. Petersburg last
summer on a river cruise, but felt we didn't have enough time to see
everything we wanted so we contracted with Alla for a private tour for
just the two of us to see the places we want to go and a few others she
suggested.

By contracting with her for St. Petersburg, she sill discount tours you
book with her in three other Baltic ports.

I found her extremely personable and easy to work with. You don't pay
her until the second day of the tour and, unlike some other companies,
does not add an upcharge to your credit card.

We did a tour with Alla in St. Pete in 2009 (but we paid on the first
day). We did the easy tour for two days. On the second day, they got
us early admission to the Hermitage before the rest of the crowds are
admitted, and we had two or more hours there with our guide. My
granddaughter was interested in Van Gogh and they had eight of them,
and our guide took us to see all of them. I could take photos of the
rooms (she got us a camera pass too) before there were so many people
that you couldn't see the floors.

The only problem I had was that the cruise director tried to make us
think that we could not get off unless we were on a ship's tour and to
block anyone with an in dependant tour from leaving the ship.



Most tour companies will get you into The Hermitage before it is open to
the general public.

Alla sent me printed directions of where to find her tour guide and how
to get off the ship.

I have heard that some cruise lines try to scare the pzx into only doing
tours with the ship, but most of us are savvy enough to know that if we
have privately booked, the proper paperwork will be there.

Alla now charges you on the second day. I think she works rather hard
to keep on top of things. She is rated third highest on Trip Advisor.
To be honest, I did not have such good experiences with number 1 rated.
They were arrogant and downright nasty. Number 2 would not
personalize. Alla was perfectly willing to make a tour for just two
people.

--
Janet Wilder
Way-the-heck-south Texas
Spelling doesn't count. Cooking does.