Visas for Baltics cruise?

[can786]

We are thinking of booking the Star Princess 10 day Baltics cruise for next August and I was curious if any of the countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Norway or Poland ) require visas. Thanks.

[Coral]

I looked into this last year when I booked this cruise (and later decided not to go).

 

Russia (St. Petersburg) does require a VISA if you are going to tour on your own. If you plan on doing excursions through the ship, the ship arranges for a group VISA. Also - some tour companies such as Red October in St. Petersburg will arrange for the VISA for you if you arrange your tour through them.

 

Cruise Critic has a great Baltics cruise board - you may want to look over there for more information.

[Tropic]

When we toured in 2003 the only country was Russia. However, if you were taking a ship's or "organized" tour group they let you in under a "group visa" taken care by the tour group. This meant you could not get off the ship on your own... in St. Petersburg that is not recommended anyway unless you have been there before and really know what you are doing. The port is a long complicated way to downtown and there was no access to independent taxi without going to the main gate of the port which was a long trek. You obviously do need a current passport good for at least 6 months past the end of your cruise. Obviously, this is somewhat of a moving target... your travel agent can get the most up to date info if anyone else does require one, but that was the status summer 2003.

[jackel101]

don't worry about visa's you will need passports

[can786]

Thanks for the speedy replies. If there is one stop where we planned on taking a group tour of some sort it would be St. Petersburg, so it seems we should be covered.

[CruisinChris]

We had a fab time on this cruise in May. Let me know if you have any specific questions. The baltics board has a wealth of good info, especially tips on how to get into Stockholm from Nynashamn where the ships docks. You might also want to look through the roll call board for old roll calls which also have good info.

[Tropic]

By the way... we used Red October and they were fabulous. They included any entrance fees in the fee they charged and when one of our party was too tired for the second day... they didn't charge us for him even though they certainly could have.

[relevart]

Princess is good about telling you what Visas you need several months out. The one thing I didn't like is they gave an application and envelope of a company that gets visas for you and doing it that way was was about twice as much money as sending it to the consulate on your own. When we got on the ship several people said they did not realize they could do it on their own. Every country that I have encountered has a consular web page with applications right there all you need to do is follow their directions. However, wait for Princess to say what you need as the consulates do not always mention that the ship will take care of it if you use their tours.