St. Petersburg Russia Tours

[Arizona Desert]

Going there in July.  Has anyone taken the metro tour offered by Viking?  Is is worthwhile or skip?

[RetroRod]

The two St. Petersburg by Metro & On Foot tours on our June HL Cruise are both sold out. Looks like it’s a popular excursion. Hopefully, someone that has been on it will comment. You may want to check out the Ports of Call section for more info. 

[Heidi13]

Most pax visiting St Petersburg book 2 or 3 day tours with one of the primary local tour companies. I created a spreadsheet to compare itinerary, prices, terms & conditions. They were also all very similar.

 

We used Alla and were very impressed with the guide and small numbers. On our ship, they split 20 of us into 2 groups. After the port we compared tours with pax that used other companies, and everyone was happy.

 

Suggest checking out the local tour companies. You will also find a number of other threads on SPB in the Viking & Ports of Call Boards.

[Dauntless]

5 hours ago, Arizona Desert said:

Going there in July.  Has anyone taken the metro tour offered by Viking?  Is is worthwhile or skip?

 

I'm sure it is worthwhile if that is your interest.  I love mosaics and was very impressed with our quick trip through two of the stations and our short ride that was part of our Grand Tour with Alla.  I had never been to Russia and probably won't make it back so I wanted to see as much of SP as I could in the time that was allotted.  I had heard so much about the city and the conception and purpose when it was begun.   There is just so much to see there.  When I came home I researched other subway stations in SP to see the variety and was totally impressed.  Having been there I had a greater appreciation of what I was looking at and how grand it really was after seeing one in person.  The same can be said about some other sites we visited on that tour.  When the touring company of "Anastasia" The Musical", came through town and they visited some of the same locations in the play that I had been  to in person, I had a greater appreciation for what they were trying to project and how well they had captured it.  The trouble with cruising in this area is they are not 'one trick pony' ports.  If that's all they had it would be easy to concentrate on that one aspect and delve deep.  SP is like a jewel box of sights and it is so nice to see the ones you like up close but they take on a different perspective when viewed as a collection. 

[lackcreativity]

We just returned last night from Viking's Russia and the Baltic Sea cruise, and spent three days with Alla in St. Petersurg.  The tour was excellent, as was the service. They even adjusted the schedule to accommodate the weather forecast for our stay. 

 

I was slightly disappointed by the subway tour, but it was my own fault. I had researched the St. Petersburg metro system before arriving, to satisfy my curiosity about why one would tour there. I saw several absolutely amazing photos, but those did not happen to be the stations we visited. I don't even know where those two particular stations were, so they may be inconveniently located for the tour route. The subway visit was interesting, and the stops we saw had lovely mosaics and were exceptionally clean. This was just one time my pre-trip research happened to lead to missed expectations.

 

 

[agnesd]

We used SPB and were extremely satisfied with them.  

[SM77]

On 5/7/2019 at 8:02 PM, agnesd said:

We used SPB and were extremely satisfied with them.  

We also used SPB Tours and they were excellent.  The one issue is that SPB Tours has a minimum number of 8 participants to run a tour and that could be an issue coming from Viking where most will do the Viking excursions.  We were there in May so we were the beginning of the season.  We were only six but since there was no mention of a minimum when I booked, they did run the tour.  It was easy to book online & pay online.  You may want to go to the roll call for that cruise and ask others to join you on the SPB tour.  We did do the Metro, the guide took us to the stops that had the beautiful mosaics. Got on one stop & off the next stop.  

[geffric]

We used TJ and was VERY pleased