Neil5054

I'll be in St. Petersburg for two days on Royal Carrib. ship. Anyone used the two day cruise tour? good/bad?? trying to decide to hire a separate tour guide.

simpsonc510

You might want to go to cruisecritic.com boards to post your question. Or maybe try the "cruise" forum here on fodors.com. There will be more people with answers to your questions there.

DH and I are thinking about a Baltic cruise. Will be anxious to hear your thoughts on the Royal Caribb ship and itinerary.

jean253

You will have to get a visa if you don.t go on the ship tours, we used the ship tours for Russia but at most of the other ports they have the hop on and off busses.that are easy to use , the Baltic Cruise was the best I have been on & would do it again.

ballbuster

yeah go on the two day cruise tour. Make sure it goes to St Isaac's cathedral and the Peterhof palace, those two will be the highlights of your Baltic cruise.

I was shocked at St. Isaac's. It was that magnificent

Peggyann

We used Red October, small gruops, will do the highlights, no wasted time with large groups on/off big buses. We loved St Petersburg.Will tailor tour to suit you.

Aleksei

A private guide gives you an opportunity to have a taylor-made tour with a flexible itinerary with the possibility to amend it on site. You'd need Russian visas for privates tours, though. It is possible to get complimentary visa support.

Mura

We were there with Renaissance in May 2001 and had a private guide. This necessitated getting our own visas as opposed to doing a ship's tour or using a group like Red October, both of which give you group visas.

The detriment to a group visa is that if you want to go out on your own, even if just to get a coke or a pepsi, you cannot.

With our own visas (yes, it costs more) we had flexibility that indeed we used.

My impression of the ship's tours is that they will take you many places but your time will be limited. We ended up going to the Hermitage on our own because due to a last minute port change our guide didn't get to us in time and a crew member gave us a lift to the museum. I might not have wanted to spend 6 hours there under other circumstances, but I think I would have been unhappy at having to keep up with a group and only spending an hour or so there.

How do you like to travel? We found having our own visas was preferable ... but not everyone would agree with us.

Regarding ship's tours -- it can also depend on the cruiseline. We haven't traveled with Royal Caribbean so I can't say ...

Spending a whole day there was an undeniable luxury. Of course, we got shafted negotiating the cab ride back to the ship, but it was still cheap!