1. You got in touch with us to request shore tour. This step is completed if you are reading this for the 1st time! ;)
2. We are preparing a tailored itinerary based on the information provided (name of the ship, arrival & departure dates, your tour preferences, age of group members as we offer discounts for youth and seniors). You will receive our offer via e-mail within 24h.
3. Share with us your thoughts and ideas about the proposed program. Together we will create the best version of it which would perfectly suites your tour needs and interests.
4. Negotiate tour pricing.
5. After your final approval of the itinerary and price you will receive tour brief via e-mail within 3 business days as a confirmation of your order.
6. Make pre-payment of 20% of the total negotiated tour price via PayPal at least 1 month before your arrival date.
7*. Send passport details which are mentioned in the section # 2 - Visa.
8*. Receive Blanket Visas (Tour Tickets) which are very important for your visa-free disembarkation.

When we receive pre-payment and you have the tour brief + the tour tickets your booking is considered finished!

* - Under the Russian Federation visa-free regime, citizens of some countries do not require a visa to enter. That's why they don't need any Blanket Visa (Tour Ticket) to pass passport control in the port of St Petersburg.

You do not need a Russian visa to go on our SHORE tours!
Prior to your arrival in Russia, we will take care of all necessary paperwork on your behalf to arrange visa-free disembarkation in the port of St. Petersburg. There is no additional charge for this service. As a result, via e-mail you will receive from us an official Blanket Visa (Tour Ticket) for each member of the group which must be printed. You will need to present them to the immigration officer in the port to pass passport control.

To arrange visa-free disembarkation we must receive the following information about every person in your group at least
2 weeks before your arrival:

• Full names (First name & Last name) as they are written in passports
• Date of birth
• Citizenship
• Gender
• Passport number
• Passport expiration date
• Name of cruise line and cruise ship
• Arriving and departure dates

The easiest way to provide with required information is to send scans of every passport photo page. Be sure that all of your private information is stored on our local secured servers to protect your identity information. After your tour is over we delete all files and personal data about you.

Right after receiving Blanket Visa (Tour Ticket) please check every letter in the documents - your names, the name of the ship, the dates, the gender - everything must be absolutely correct. Please send us a message to confirm that everything is right and you were able to print the documents.

To pass passport control you will heed to present your passports together with printed Blanket Visa (Tour Ticket). Passport must be valid for the dates of your visit. It also must be clean, readable and without any torn pages. Usually you are asked to pass control one-by-one not in a couple or group. Custom officers are almost always very strict about the immigration documents, so please prepare everything in advance to avoid any stress.

Sometimes ships try to control disembarkation process stating that all those passengers having made their own independent arrangements must wait until the ship's own excursion passengers have exited first. The ship has no right to hold its passengers aboard against their will. In fact there is no difference for the Russian Immigration between passengers booked with ship sponsored excursion and passengers booked with a private one. That means you can disembark at the time specified in your tour ticket.

We will meet you in the port terminal right after you pass the passport control. On the morning of your ship's arrival, we are already there waiting for you! Please look out for our company representative holding the sign with you name on it.

DOWNLOAD and take with you a scheme in which we described the whole process of disembarkation step-by-step.

All our shore tours in combination of both inside and outside excursions. Your guide will have special skip-the-line entrance tickets for each of the museums listed in the itinerary. In majority of situations such tickets will help to avoid lines. Nevertheless on some particular days it could happen that even with our vouchers you will have to wait approximately 15-20 minutes to enter to the museum. It may happen in the Hermitage Museum and the Catherine Palace. First of all it is connected with the fact that the halls in the museums are narrow to enter for everyone at once. The second reason is that there is a metal ticket check point, and it takes time to pass through it. Of course it means that on such days it can be very crowded inside the museums. We hope for your understanding and sincerely appreciate your patience in advance.

If we don't make necessary arrangements at all to obtain skip-the-line tickets it will be almost impossible to visit certain places like the Hermitage, Peterhof Grand Palace or Catherine's palace with Amber Room, or Yusupov Palace. We can be flexible about such things as city tour (where to go, how long to stay, what to see) and the sights included into the city tour (Peter and Paul Fortress, Church on the Spilled Blood, St.Isaac's Cathedral)

Several museums - Hermitage, Grand Palace in Peterhof and Catherine's Palace - provide possibility of early admission. It is required to pay extra for this, but there is no guarantee of entrance without waiting in a line if there were many people who requested this feature. Usually it is less crowded inside the museums than during normal operating hours but sometimes it's not.

Photo permision inside the museums is always included in the total price of your itinerary. Although in some museums photo is allowed only without flash. Photo is not allowed at all in all the palaces in Peterhof and in the Amber Room of the Catherine's Palace, the Yusupov Palace.

We deeply believe that success of your shore excursions depends on your local guide's knowledge, personality and ability to create a friendly atmosphere. As we are a small and young tour bureau, we always hand-pick guides who are knowledgeable, it goes without saying, but also friendly, enthusiastic, personable and kind. Our guides speak English fluently, have all necessary museum licenses and are ready to fulfill excursions with positive emotions.

By taking the time to learn about you and your fellow-travellers, we always work to customize your itinerary. If you choose our team you will definitely see St Petersburg through the eyes of a local who is passionate about this fabulous city.

While on shore tours you spend many hours inside the car. Understanding that, we use only comfortable air-conditioned, non-smoking, clean western cars (mostly Mercedes) to transport you between many museums in different parts of St Petersburg.

Our drivers are truly professionals who know the city very well and in many situations their skills are priceless because they help to avoid traffic jams and save time. All drivers have several years of work experience in tourism industry, including shore excursions, and majority of them speak a little of English.

Despite all the problems our main priority is to make sure you won't be late to your ship at the end of the departure day. Our regular rule is to get back to the ship one hour before the departure time and we are very strict with it.

In case of any emergency with vehicle we will be ready to use a special extra car or take necessary actions to return you to your ship at the appointed time, at our expense.

We don't include the cost of lunches in our private tours to make your activities more flexible. Your guide will always have several places in mind to recommend. Among them are:

1. Café "Shtolle" - famous for great variety of traditional Russian pies with meat and sweets - average receipt $10-15 USD p/p
2. Teremok - try Russian style pancakes, crepes, soups (Borsch) - average receipt $15 USD p/p

The cost of lunch in a restaurant with Russian cuisine in the center of St Petersburg will be approximately $20-30 USD p/p. The choice of places where it is possible to enjoy lunch of a good quality is limited in Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo (Catherine's Palace). Prices there may be higher than in St Petersburg.

Upon your request, it is possible to include the meal into the cost of the tour. For the groups of 6 persons and more we strongly recommend to have lunches pre-ordered. This way you will definitely spend less time in a restaurant and more time in the museums. The cost of traditional Russian style lunch (soup, salad, main course) will be $18 USD p/p.

If you are very energetic and curious about local life in St Petersburg, we recommend to enrich your shore tour with interesting activities in the evening. There is so much to do and see in our wonderful city! Among the best and most popular options are:

• Visit world-famous Russian ballet performance. St. Petersburg is the cultural capital of Russia. The city has more than 80 theaters among them world famous the Mariinsky Theatre and one of Russia's oldest opera and ballet houses - The Mikhailovsky Theatre. We are locals and have plenty of ways to reserve and finally purchase tickets so you don't have to overpay to online ticket agencies.
• Enjoy your evening hearing and seeing opera. Both theaters mentioned above (The Mariinsky Theatre & The Mikhailovsky Theatre) are the best places to visit for opera lovers too. You can book tickets through us to the performance scheduled for your trip. Of course you can check theater's online shops or try your luck at a box office when in the city but usually tickets are sold out many days before the show.
• Visit Folk Show "Feel Yourself Russian" in the Nikolayevsky Palace. Take this unique opportunity to truly experience Russian culture by seeing an authentic folk performance – a perfect end to a long day of sightseeing in our majestic city. Relax and enjoy the colorful show offered by various dance, music and choir groups. A delicious snack bar is served for every guest during the intermission.
• Explore Faberge Museum with audio-guide. Since 2013 the lavish 18th century Shuvalov Palace, St. Petersburg has been the home of Museum Fabergé and holds the world's largest collection of Fabergé eggs. You will get an audio guide and spend 1h inside the museum to get a better understanding of Russian jewellery art traditions.
• Shop at an authentic Russian supermarket or markets. Food markets were set up in the Soviet Era and have continued today as an easy way for locals to buy and sell produce and goods. They are housed in large, non-descript buildings with very little fanfare. There are dozens of vendors at each selling all types of produce, meats, spices and dried fruits. Also you will stop by in one of the shop of the most popular chain of food retailers. It is there where locals buy food regularily.
• Spend evening in a Russian family - The best way to experience the daily life in Russia is to have a dinner with a Russian family. Try traditional food with vodka tastings and you will see another side of Russian life hidden from regular tourists. You will see how the locals live, what is their occupation, and what they think about politics, the economic situation etc.

We kindly ask our guests to make a pre-payment of 20% of the total negotiated tour price via PayPal at least 1 month before their arrival date to St Petersburg. On your e-mail you will receive PayPal invoice which can be paid with your card (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX).

The rest of the negotiated total tour price may be paid only by cash (Roubles, USD, EURO) on the second day of your tour with us. You can prepare the money in advance or make a stop to withdraw necessary amount from the ATM when coming back to the ship after 1st day tour.

Unfortunately currently we don't accept offline payments by cards.If you want to pay only by card the tour price will be 7% higher.

If you organize a group of 10 people and more, 1 person from this group receives 50% discount from the announced price per person.

For children of 6 y. o. and under participating in any tour is free. In our car we will place a special baby seat upon your request.

All children of 7-15 y. o. will receive $15 US discount.

Students (18-21 y.o.) will receive $10 US discount.

Seniors of 60+ y.o. will receive $20 US discount.

If you wish to cancel our arrangements, we kindly ask you to notify us as soon as possible by sending an e-mail to mail@ithorosho.com. We can only accept written notices of cancellation. Please don't leave any voice messages with cancellations.

In case of cancellation no later than 2 weeks in advance before the tour date we refund 90% from the deposit amount (the rest 10% were charged by PayPal as commission). In case of cancellation within 2 weeks before the tour date 90% of the deposit sum can be refunded only if there were no expenses to buy entrance tickets to the museums. For example, we have to buy skip-the-line tickets to the Catherine Palace 1 month in advance before the tour. If they had been already purchased and you decided to cancel our arrangements, we will have to deduct amount spent on tickets from the sum which will be refunded.

There are NO REFUNDS on museum, theatre, opera & folk show tickets if they were already purchased. In this case they become non-refundable at all. We simply will not be able to receive money back according to the terms & conditions of theaters and organizers of the folk show. Usually we buy all tickets to the shows at least 1 week in advance before your tour. We will send you photos or scans of tickets to confirm that they were already purchased. So, if cancelled 1 week before the tour date - 100% refund for tickets; if cancelled less than 1 week before the tour - no refund.

If you cancel after receiving the Blanket Visas (Tour Tickets) we will have to void them on the same day of receiving cancellation notice. You will no longer be able to leave the port of St Petersburg using them.

We will do FULL REFUND if your ship doesn't dock in the port of St Petersburg at all.