Saint Petersburg Travel Forum

Hi all, I'm in a little bit of a complicated situation. There are two couples (husband and I and husband's parents) who are taking a cruise in the Baltics over the summer and want to do our own thing in St. Petersburg. Naturally this requires visas all around. The catch is that my husband and I are in the UK and so can apply for the visa in person, but the in-laws are in the states and will need to do theirs through an agency. A google search turns up tons of agencies that claim to do this, however, some look quite dodgy. Are there any that are tried and true? I've seen Way to Russia mentioned, but their webpage is out of date. Any agencies I should definitely stay clear of?

The last time I went to Russia was as a student so the visa was taken care of for me. . .Thanks in advance!

Prety easy, here is the Russian Embassy in the U.S. with a link to Visas.

http://www.russianembassy.org/

I didn't use an agency, I got the necessary documents from the cruise line (invitation, etc) and then applied directly to the Russian Embassy. It was a bit of work to get the cruise line to cooperate as they prefer to have you stick with the ship tours.

If they would prefer to use an agency, you might check over on the boards at cruisecritic.com, there should be someone who has used an agency recently plus you'll find some pointers on how to go about getting around on your own.

Although I think some dock closer to the city, our ship docked WAY outside St. Petersburg, the 1st day we took a bus from the port with the help of the ship's magician who traded some $$$ for rubles, the bus never came on the way back and we had to get a gypsy cab. The 2nd day we had prearranged for a personal tour with a guide. If you try to leave the port on your own without a guide, make sure you know where the ship is docked.

I would use www.realrussia.com they have just sorted my visa for Russia ,Belarus and China with absolutly no fuss and very proffessional £85 for Russia.
Give them a try

Thanks all. Sufr54, have you used any of the agencies they listed?

Dabs, that's great. To be clear, my husband and I are fine to do it ourselves, but the agency is for my in-laws who live in the US and several hours drive from the nearest Russian embassy. They have to do it by courier.

I've been over at cruisecritic too and it has been mostly helpful, though I find the vast majority of people are booking guided tours. Which line did you go with? We'll be on Princess. I've heard warnings that the docks are quite a ways from the city centre. Did you see any marshutki or was it just the one bus?

chrisrobo, thanks for that, but it looks like they're based in the UK, which is no good for my US in-laws unfortunately.

We live in the US too, also nowhere near a Russian Embassy. We sent our passports and applications, I believe, to the Washington DC office using either Federal Express or the US Postal Service's tracked delivery. Some people are more comfortable using a service, I couldn't see spending the extra money on top of the visa cost and the courier costs. I'm probably going back in May, I'll try to remember to report back with how I do it. Come to think of it, I better get on planning that trip ;-)

I think the cruise line we went with is out of business, Orient Lines, too bad because they had great cruises. Not all ships dock out at the shipping docks BUT I'll bet most of the bigger boats do. We took a port shuttle up to the gates, that's where we met the magician and exchanged money for the bus. He then showed us where the bus was at, since we had been there before, we got off when we started recognizing things. I know there were taxis at the gates when we returned that night, I gladly paid one $5 to drive us to the ship (it's a long walk). But I don't believe there were any sitting waiting at the dock when we got off the boat, I think they had to wait outside the gates.

I'd strongly encourage you, at least for the 2nd day, to book something with a guide of some sort. Had we encountered the problems we did on day 1, we probably would have missed the boat. And even with a private guide, we were the last ones back to the ship, well ahead of the sailing time but still the lady from Intourist came over and yelled at us and our guide.

We just used Way to Russia to assist us in applying for our visa in canada, and they were very very helpful.

Dont know if this is relevant to americans, but I can recommend them.

Hi,
I know agency
http://www.gotorussia.com/
they are always helpful.
you can check
http://forum.sennaya.com
and ask a question over there.

You are Welcome to Russia!

Thanks everyone for the advice! I'll look at potentially having a guide for the second day; we were thinking of doing Peterhof if the weather was nice.

No i have not used any of the agencies listed.

Only thru Embassies and using certified mail.

Hi Foxie,
We just got our Russian Visa's, from Wash.DC. It took about 3 weeks. The Russian Embassy is using outside companies, if you can not submit your visa application in person. We used CIBT (cibt.com). The Embassy's website has recommended companies to use.
We visited St.pete in 2006 and used Denrus. You do not need a visa with them if less than 3 days. The tours were very good, but be ready for a marathon. So much to see.