Master thread of St. Petersburg advice and recommendations from cruisers who've been!

[tring]

22 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

For someone who is not a citizen of the UK, what is FCO?

 

Also, what are the other ports that you refer to as having been in this previous situation?

 

It is our Foreign Development and Commonwealth Office, so basically the government and equivalent to your CDC, though from what I understand advice of the CDC is not so final as it is for us.  It is if they advise against "all but essential travel", then as I said we cannot go for holiday purposes as insurance invalidated.

 

We had a Black Sea cruise booked for shortly after Crimea was annexed.  That included two ports in Russia and three in Crimea.  Crimea was advised against immediately, though that "event" was not in the same category as what is happening now, I assume largely because Crimea does have a largely "Russian" leaning population and the take over was peaceful.  An extra day in Odessa was added, but we felt we may not have gone anyway so took the option to cancel, which we had to be given due to the extent of changes.  In the event the cruise ship did not call into Odessa that year.  We have had other bookings affected, but that was the easiest to explain in this situation.

 

The SPB calls went ahead at that stage, though the SPB embassies for the US and UK in SPB were closed by Russia, in tit for that actions.  Hence if anyone needs an embassy, possibly by loosing a passport, they have had to travel to Moscow since then.  A far milder situation altogether to the present though. 

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by tring

[cruiser551]

What timing.  My Baltic and Russia cruise seems doomed.  First booked for 2019 which was canceled due to Covid, now a day before my final payment is due Russia will likely be out!  Many great ports but St Pete's was the jewel of this cruise for us.  Grrr was so looking forward to this cruise.

 

[ontheweb]

There was a post over on the Princess boards that made quite a bit of sense. The poster had just requested and promptly received her refund from a private tour operator in St. Petersburg. She suggested that anyone having paid this make a request for a refund immediately as with the sanctions being put in place this kind of transfer may soon not be possible.

[Radbooks]

4 hours ago, ontheweb said:

There was a post over on the Princess boards that made quite a bit of sense. The poster had just requested and promptly received her refund from a private tour operator in St. Petersburg. She suggested that anyone having paid this make a request for a refund immediately as with the sanctions being put in place this kind of transfer may soon not be possible.

Yes, I put in a request for my deposit that I'd paid to Tours by Locals and got an email notice that it should be refunded within 7 days or so.