Cannot comment on that group as we had a private guide thru DENRUS but I would advise you to see AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE during your brief stay no matter how crammed in it seems it is all very worthwhile

Have you been to cruisecritic.com for ship reviews?

I highly recommend Anastasia Tours - excellent in any way, highly personalized and flexible. Communicate by e-mail. We included a ballet performance at the Mariinsky which they organized too.

http://www.anastasiaworld.com/

These tour operators get good reviews (but I have no personal experience with them):

Alla Tours
Denrus
Red October

We found a terrific tour guide for St. Petersburg on this forum. We could not have been more pleased.


http://www.tourservice.sp.ru/

Thank you for all of your responses. I have contacted the tour groups as suggested and will probably go with one of recommended tours.

We were in St-Petersburg last year and took a very good shore excursion from Tour De Force. Bella could even provide us german-speaking guide.

I have checked the web and found that they made terrific website: www.tourdeforce.travel

The web site does look good. We booked already a group tour though it. Thanks for your input!

The question was “Do I book an excursion with the cruise ship, or should I try a private company?” I had never before consulted with a very small travel company — in a completely foreign country like Russia — so I was a quite skeptical that TJ Travel could satisfy my needs. Would they speak English well and be able to communicate effectively and answer all my questions and satisfy all my concerns? Would they be forthright in their pricing? Would they deliver as promised? I wanted a nice excursion in St. Petersburg and had considered “Denrus”, “Red October” and some offered by our cruise ship.

Julia Ivanushkina and Tatyana Churikova operate TJ Travel (travel-stpetersburg.com). Tatyana was my contact. She was friendly, professional and extremely patient. She worked with me very conscientiously, and she promptly replied to my many E-mails. With her help, and through Cruise Critic on the Internet, I was able to assemble a small group — just eight of us — for a fully loaded two-day tour of St. Petersburg. June 6 & 7, 2009. Tatyana arranged our free blanket visas (we didn’t need to get an expensive full Russian visa) and fully arranged a great itinerary with a wonderful, most knowledgeable, perfect-English-speaking guide. Our Mercedes mini-bus and excellent driver accommodated us very comfortably. The experience fully met the expectations of our group. The price was $275 per person for the two days, less a 5% discount for paying in cash. Far, far less expensive than the ship’s excursions. Each of us also paid $60 for an evening show with transfer.

I recently completed a "Reflections of Russia" tour through TourDeForce. It was first rate. The guides were exceedingly knowledgable. There was a lot of flexibility to the tour, with optional packages available. If you so desired (as I did) there was also some free time for exploring on your own. TourDeForce was extremely professional and reacted quickly to emails or cell phone calls. I found them a first rate outfit to arrange my tour through, and they delivered a first rate experience.

DenRus and Red October(the Russian version not the web site in the US) are the most established and well regarded, some of the others mentioned are brand new so there is little track record. Of all the small tour companies springing up few are much more than a cell phone and a computer so be sure you have travel insurance. The larger ones that are qualified by the cruise industry to supply tours for the ships are Baltic Travel, DenRus(an American company) and Arctur(the largest). They all have western liability insurance so there is less risk in case of problems.
Some of the newer ones are Alla Tours and Anastasia Tours.

I highly recommend Laura mailto:laural@mc-fortuna.ru at Red October Tours - http://www.redoctober.ru/ Russian dept.
Som

We took a Baltic cruise in July. St. Petersburg was the highlight of the voyage, thanks to the efficiency of the tour company we chose - Palladium Travel. The guide we had - Serguei - was fantastic! He knew so much about the history of Russia and spoke excellent English. They have a nice website - www.palladium.spb.ru