St Petersburg-Catherine's Palace - who offers early admit?

[atltravel]

Does anyone know of a tour company that got early admittance into Catherine's Palace?

[New Hampshire]

I have a tour confirmed with Alla for July 2008 with early admittance to Catherine's Palace. Alla was a pleasure to work with and I'm so looking forward to our tour with her company. There are four people in my group and we found four more to join us on the tour on the Roll Call Board for our sailing.

[EGG]

We had early admission with Red October. We got there early and had to wait for about 15 minutes to get in. By the time they opened there were multiple independent and bus tours waiting to get in. So not only did we pay extra for the early admission, but there was a large waiting crowd.

 

I think the benefit of the early admission is the fact that there is a long drive to the Palace and nothing is open at that time anyway. So it works better for scheduling a long day.

[EGG]

Sorry, double post.

[dbh62ark]

We had early admission to Catherine's Palace on our Denrus tour, but it may depend on the day of the week so could vary for your visit.

 

Have a great trip,

Donna

[Dale Jr]

Does anyone know of a tour company that got early admittance into Catherine's Palace?

 

Unfortunately all tour companies have early admittance to this and all other venues if you choose to pay extra.

 

Because you must follow a straight path through this palace even with our early admittance it still felt very crowded. They are also timed admittances so even though we arrived there at 9:30 we had to wait until 10:00 for our alloted time. While waiting two large bus loads arrived and went zipping straight in which sort of P#@%$ me off.

 

The early admittance to the Hermitage was definitely worth it though.

[qm2lover]

We recently had early entry on our Red October Tour. We must have arrived just after 8 am (we had left by approx. 9.30 am). There was quite a crowd waiting before we were allowed in. But as we were a small group of only 5 our wonderful guide managed to get us in first! We went round the whole palace with empty (of people) rooms in front of us.

 

To see the gold corridor, its entire length, without people in the way was fantastic, magical, unbelievible, out of this world - I could go on about just how great it was to be the first to walk round the palace that day.

 

I cannot praise our tour and our guide enough.

[samcraft]

Arranging an early entrance to a museum is just a matter of your choice and budget. However, please be prepared to see a huge crowd from the ships docked in St.Petersburg that also arrange the early entrance. So when you arrive at the Catherine Palace they are all there. The regular entrance hour is 10 a.m. I personally found very convenient to arrange 10:30 entrance for it is not so rushy. At the same time, never take Catherine Palace in the afternoon before the ship departure - you can miss you ship for the traffic jams, and especially on Friday when the whole city are heading for their country houses.

[dog]

Our R.O. tour guide picked us up at 7:15am, made a coffee stop 15min. then a stop for toilet at the supermarket 10 mins. and we went right to Catherine's Palace and walked right in without any lineups.

Just tell your tour company that is what you want to do...go first thing in the morning before the crowds arrive. Their company pre arranges this for you.

We did the same thing the 2nd morning to go to Peterhof before the crowds although we left an hour later and we took the hydrofoil back to avoid the traffic at lunch time.

 

Also, build in time to arrive back at the ship....we did and needed it because the traffic was really crazy between 4:30 and 5:30 on the day we were leaving S.P.

[atltravel]

Our R.O. tour guide picked us up at 7:15am, made a coffee stop 15min. then a stop for toilet at the supermarket 10 mins. and we went right to Catherine's Palace and walked right in without any lineups.

Just tell your tour company that is what you want to do...go first thing in the morning before the crowds arrive. Their company pre arranges this for you.

We did the same thing the 2nd morning to go to Peterhof before the crowds although we left an hour later and we took the hydrofoil back to avoid the traffic at lunch time.

 

Also, build in time to arrive back at the ship....we did and needed it because the traffic was really crazy between 4:30 and 5:30 on the day we were leaving S.P.

do you remember what time you got into Catherine's? and peterhof?

[houch]

We had the ship's tour to Catherine's Palace and to Peterhof in the same day. We left early, had time to stop at a memorial on the way out of St Petersburg, got to the gates before they were open with only a few folks ahead of us. Didn't find it to be too crowded, (we expect crowds in these situations). Next we had shopping in a little market area, then a good lunch in a very large building where there were many tours. The service was quick and excelleng and the lunch good. Our bus was hit by another while we were at lunch so had to wait for another bus to come out from St Petersburg. The bus that hit ours was also a Princess tour. Our tour guide was in touch with the ship and we went on to have our whole tour of Peterhof before returning to the ship, which was about 1 hour 15 min later than scheduled. The ship waited for us and took off about 20-30 min late. This is why we always book our tours with the ship. May be a little more expensive but surely not as much as the expence of getting ourselves to the next port to meet up with the ship.

St Petersburg was an awesome city! Least favorite tour was the Hermatage as I am not into the art thing, and it was mostly paintings. Not for me!