Northern Exploration Cruise to Russia

We are thinking of taking the 2017 Northern Exploration cruise to Russia, This will be our first cruise on Oceania although we have cruised on smaller ships on other lines and we love the smaller ships.

I have 2 questions -

1) Has anyone taken this cruise and what did you think of it

2) Oceania offers a free package which includes 10 free excursions per cabin. in general, is this a good deal and are the free excursions worth the money. Specifically, are the free excursions on this cruise good.

Our thought is that we will use them for excursions in Russia and do provate tours in other ports.

Any other thoughts on this cruise.

DON

Don;

We are also on that cruise. I am trying to get a Roll Call going for it, but that roll call has been almost dead. Will start posting some private tours that I'm interested in, for stops along the way in the next week, to see if that gets any action.

Mura just came back from that cruise, and hopefully can give you/us some insight. We're excited about it!

Same as you, will probably use O for the Russian port tours, but also exploring other options. Will report that on the Roll Call. Join us there with the lone other cruising couple.

Several of the towns appear to be DIY towns where one can walk around the town and see the sights without paying for a tour. Planning on doing that also, along with other planned tours.

Would highly recommend DenRus. You can see them on Tripadviser. We used them for 2 days in StPetersburg on a Baltic cruise a few years ago.

Would highly recommend DenRus. You can see them on Tripadviser. We used them for 2 days in StPetersburg on a Baltic cruise a few years ago.

do they do the north part of Russia ??

I do not believe this cruise goes to SPB

do they do the north part of Russia ??

I do not believe this cruise goes to SPB

Sorry, I saw Russia and jumped the gun! You are right, they don't do the northern part.

This looks like an amazing itinerary.

Don;

 

We are also on that cruise. I am trying to get a Roll Call going for it, but that roll call has been almost dead. Will start posting some private tours that I'm interested in, for stops along the way in the next week, to see if that gets any action.

 

Mura just came back from that cruise, and hopefully can give you/us some insight. We're excited about it!

 

Same as you, will probably use O for the Russian port tours, but also exploring other options. Will report that on the Roll Call. Join us there with the lone other cruising couple.

 

Several of the towns appear to be DIY towns where one can walk around the town and see the sights without paying for a tour. Planning on doing that also, along with other planned tours.

Do you have an e-mail for Mura that you can send me off board at donald.schoengold41@gmail.com or else have her e-mail me. Checking on the free excursions that are offered on other cruises, it seems as if they are mostly 3 - 4 hour $100 to $150 excursions which I am probably not interested in. I might be better off just taking the $1000 OBC. It will cover the daily tips but a bit left over fr other stuff.

Have you cruised with Oceania before? We have not but the cruise looks really good. You can also get back to me off board at my e-mail address.

DON

Here I am! If the email link below doesn't work, try mura at speakeasy dot net.

That will certainly get to me.

I'm just not sure that my cruise is the one you are talking about! Basically our cruise (June 25-July 15 2016) was Copenhagen to Southampton. The only Russian ports were Murmansk, Archangelsk and the Solovestky Islands. The rest was Norway (which was why we booked).

We were in Murmansk in July 2010 on another Oceania Norway cruise and it didn't please us ... so we stayed on board this time. Another passenger mentioned how their guide said "our city isn't very attractive" (which is true) ... and another passenger mentioned how Murmansk is having problems with declining population. College students leave and don't come back.

When we had our 2010 stop here we searched and searched for private guides and couldn't find any, so we took a ship's tour. Our guide was a college student with excellent English, but the tour we'd selected was not all that wonderful. From what I heard on this summer's visit, I don't think that has changed.

We had a number of oLife tours on this cruise and the ones we chose were excellent. The one exception to that was in the Solovetsky Islands, simply because our guide's English wasn't that wonderful but she did like to talk A LOT. Was I amazed when I overheard a conversation where she said her "real job" was as an English teacher! Still, the visit to the gulag/monastery was very interesting. Our tour was mostly the monastery, only minimally the gulag ... during Stalin's time, thousands died here.

In Archangelsk we had a ship's tour to the fine arts museum. it turns out the museum is enormous -- over several buildings. We happened to have a guided tour of ikons, which most of us were NOT interested in, but our guide was so good that we learned a lot.

But these were the only Russian ports on this cruise. The Norway part was far more interesting to us, and I think to most of the other passengers but of course I cannot speak to them.

In 2010 we had a port of call at Svalbard which we enjoyed very much. Another passenger had booked a private tour with a taxi driver who never showed up, so we just took the shuttle into town and spent much of the time at the museum -- most interesting. Others walked through town and found much of interest.

Having said all of this, if our experience is close to what you expect -- please feel free to write!

Mura (I just found you guys by accident!)

Unlike Mura we did enjoy our tour in Murmansk back in 2010

It is just a matter of where your interests lie

I would skip any visit to art galleries but many people love them so it is a case of YMMV :D

Lyn and I have gone back and forth on the value of Murmansk for quite a while (we were on the same cruise in 2010).

Our problem may well have been that we chose the wrong tour, despite the excellence of our guide! OTOH, the few people I spoke to on our cruise who did tour Murmansk this time pretty much agreed with me. But this was a VERY limited survey. (Maybe 5-6 people, no more than that.)

By no means am I advising people to avoid Murmansk. Lyn isn't the only person who appreciated it more than we did!

Mura

Lyn and I have gone back and forth on the value of Murmansk for quite a while (we were on the same cruise in 2010).

 

Our problem may well have been that we chose the wrong tour, despite the excellence of our guide! OTOH, the few people I spoke to on our cruise who did tour Murmansk this time pretty much agreed with me. But this was a VERY limited survey. (Maybe 5-6 people, no more than that.)

 

By no means am I advising people to avoid Murmansk. Lyn isn't the only person who appreciated it more than we did!

 

Mura

Mura It was a beautiful day there & after the fiasco with immigration we did enjoy it we were on the old bus without A/C some others had the newer buses ...maybe it was the pancakes that made the day better ;)

We did a couple of good private tours in Norway also

We are not world travellers so maybe we just appreciated going there

I would love to do this cruise ...working on DH ;)

Lyn, I'll have to check out the itinerary .. I'm still not convinced it's the one we just did! My photos show that we did have nice weather back in 2010 ... somehow I lost all my records of the trip except for the photos! So I go by memory ...

We did have good weather in Russia this time, whereas in the Norwegian ports before we got there it was grey and rainy. Then when we left Russia and returned to Norway the weather improved!

Mura

We were also on the June 25 cruise. One of our least favorite itineraries. We had private guides in every port including the Russian ports. Do the Iceland cruise instead. Way better

Lyn, I'll have to check out the itinerary .. I'm still not convinced it's the one we just did! My photos show that we did have nice weather back in 2010 ... somehow I lost all my records of the trip except for the photos! So I go by memory ...

 

Mura

Mura some of the ports you just did were the same as the 2010 cruise but I believe there were a few different Norway ports for this years cruise

Yes I agree last time some ports were dull & gloomy

at North Cape it was windy & cold I was glad I had my hat & mitts for that day ;)

Lyn