Great time in St. Petersburg - independantly

[SUE A]

I just returned from a Celebrity cruise to the Baltics and had a wonderful time! St. Petersburg was my absolute favorite port. I was traveling with my best friend and we wanted to see as much of St. Petersburg as we possibly could in two days, and did not want to go with a large crowd. We had heard that you could only go in to this port one of 2 ways. #1 was do one of the ships shore excursions #2 was get your own visa and go it alone. Well, if you have ever gone through the process of getting a visa, you know it is a hassel and very time consuming. I figured there had to be another way -- and yes there is. You can use a tour company that is certified by the Russian government to do tours for cruise ship passengers. There are several out there, I ended up using DenRus. I found 6 fellow travelers on my cruise using this website -- thank you Cruise Critic! And we planned our tours with DenRus on line. I had read that we might have trouble getting off the ship -- but I found this was not true. Celebrity asks you for your tour operator info, what time you want to go ashore,and you are all set. They get your group together seperately, and take you all in together. You go through the "independant traveler" gate at customs, they stamp your passport, give you a little red ticket -- do not loose this! -- and then you are off and running. Our guide was waiting for us right outside of customs. She was wonderful! We had the best two days of touring that you could ever hope for. And my 6 traveling companions that I met for the first time on board were terrific! So, if you are thinking of going indepentant in St. Petersburg -- Go for it! You'll love it! ~ Sue A:)

[pungo3]

Thanks Sue! That's exactly what I'm going to do. I have a small group (7) that I will be touring St. Petersburg with using Denrus. I met them through Cruise Critic (isn't this a fabulous place?) and can't wait to tour with them. I hope I can come back and write positive things just as you have done. We sail next Thursday and I can't begin to tell you how excited I am.:D

[crazy4cruisn]

What time did you and your group get off the ship? We have heard it is better just to get your group together and go off without the ship's "help", that they let their groups off first.

[Ready4cruz'n]

Celebrity queried all those who were going "independently" about the time their tours started. They asked us to congregate in Michael's Place (lounge) while the ship cleared customs. Our party of six had a 7:30 AM start with DenRus and was the first group off of the ship in St. Petersburg. Our guide and driver were there waiting for us - the perfect start to our terrific tour! After all I had been warned about, concerning Celebrity letting ship excursion passengers off the ship first, it turned out to be a non-issue.

[2martini]

Although ours was a small ship, we just breezed right off the boat at the first opportunity; hardly paused at customs, and met our RO guide on the dock, holding a small sign. All very easy.

Throughout the day we encountered groups from our ship doing the excursion thing--they couldn't hear the guide, had to stand in line or jammed up in a herd, couldn't see, and in one place had to wait about 2 hours to get in. Ship's excursions are way overpriced anyway IMHO so wasting time like that would be very frustrating.