Oriana and Russia bound end of month.

[Rabbitsmummy]

Greetings just joined and am a bit a sea ( ha de ha )

Booked to do the Baltic/Scandinavia Cruise from Southampton 29 Aug

Having cunningly worked it to cover birthday - 29th and Wedding Anniversary Sept 11 .:)

Plan to do some excursions - but seem to recall reading P &O s prices are on the high side ( aren't they all ?)

We normally do our own thing .. but particularly whilst in St. Petersburg what with visas ( or not) etc. felt a 'proper excursion' best way to go.. Notice having googled trips etc.. a lot of companies . so any help in pointing us in the right direction muchly appreciated .

ALSO. hubby fine on flat .. but a bit like a car with a dodgy alternator hasn't much oomph going up hill .;)

ta everso

 

RM

[KirkNC]

Welcome to Cruise Critic! You might also post your query under Ports of Call as there are lots of threads on St Petersburg. We used SPB tours and they did an excellent job.

[John Bull]

All ports on Baltic cruises are easy to DIY with the exception of:

 

If you port at Warnemunde & want to go to Berlin, that's problematic but not impossible to DIY in the timescale. Best go with a tour, either ship's or a private operator - Alla & SPB, possibly others based in St Petersburg also offer Warnemunde to Berlin. Though better still is to check out the local charms of Rostock & leave Berlin for a 2 or 4 day city break by air - well worth several days.

 

Edit: just seen that your departure from Warnemunde is 3pm or 5pm, depending who you believe.

Most ships depart around 8pm.

Forget Berlin, can't be done.

 

There's a number of visa-free local operators in St Peterburg & frankly you can't go wrong with any of them. Alla, SPB, TJ, Best Guides, Denrus (I think they organise P&O's tours so may decline), Red Oktober, Anastisia, they all have excellent reputations.

But because the response from Oriana isn't as great as from bigger ships they may need you to put a viable group together - we had that with Aurora. They operate 16-seater minibuses & need a minimum of about 8 in order to offer standard prices. They'll add independent enquiries to yours to help with the numbers, so best if you express interest with 3 or 4 of them - you may end up with the one which comes up to numbers.

 

Check through the RollCall for your cruise, there are several folk looking to put together viable tour groups for St Pete's that you can join, here's the link:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2008020

(at least one person taking ship's tours is doing so "because otherwise you need a visa" & has been put right by others. Those privately-arranged tours have the same visa-free status as ship's tours).

BUT YOU DO NEED TO BOOK IN ADVANCE. The tour ticket e-mailed to you gets you through immigration without a visa.

And time is getting short - so you need to get cracking.

 

Alternatively, P&O are now offering what appear to be similar small-group tours. I don't know how P&O's prices compare, but I would urge you to take a full 2-day small-group tour - whether that be ship's or local operator's - rather than ship's large-coach cattle-drives. Apart from the usual small-group advantages, in St Pete's the small group tours include pre-public access to the Hermitage, to or from Peterhof by hydrofoil rather than by road, and a metro ride.

 

And here's a link to the forum on Baltic ports.

Lots of useful info & opinion

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=192

 

Those, and other forums, also accessible by scrolling to the bottom of this page & clicking on the arrow against "forum jump".

 

Great part of the world for cruisin'

Have a good one

 

JB :)

Edited August 2, 2014 by John Bull

[FTLcruisers]

We were in St Petersburg in June and used Alla Tours - our 2nd time using them. We were fortunate enough to have a 3 day stay so did 2 days in St Petersburg and 1 day in Moscow. We were really pleased with our tour and I'd highly recommend you check out Alla's website. She offers tours in some of the other Baltic ports too - we used Alla for our excursion to Berlin.

 

 

Marianne

[Krazy Kruizers]

Welcome to Cruise Critic.

Check out P&O at this link:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=38

Also join your Roll Call at this link to see what tours others are doing:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2008020