Helsinki to St. Petersburg ferry trip

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience going from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Back in 2006, though, I spent a couple weeks in Finland and found it very easy to take a day trip by ferry (100 minutes each way) to Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn is one of the best, if not the best, preserved medieval city in Europe and the center of town is easily walkable from the ferry terminal. I really enjoyed the food, beer, sights, and local museums we found there. Sorry I can't help with St. Petersburg, but hopefully this at least gave you another option. Good luck!

Here are four companies (and there are others) that regularly come up on cruisecritic.com as being good ones for St. P. You can e-mail several of them and see if you like how they respond (that's what is recommended on CC). They all work with people who arrive by means other than cruise ship. I have no personal experience with any of them. http://www.alla-tour.com/ http://www.denrus.ru/ http://www.redoctober.us/ http://www.spb-tours.com/st-petersburg/en/

The trip from Helsinki to St. Petersburg is made on a St. Peter Line ferry (see www.stpeterline.com). They offer tours of St. Petersburg as do the companies Harold mentioned. In June last year we took an excursion offered by St. Peter Line immediately upon arrival the morning of day 1, used Alla Tours on day 2, and went out on our own on day 3. I think you'll end up using a combination of the ferry line and another tour company for your trip to St. Pete. There are vendors (travel agents) here in the U.S. that sell the ferry and hotel tickets, so you could possibly use one of them to arrange your entire trip. On the other hand, we bought the ferry & hotel portion from a St. Peter Line agent in Helsinki (using email and phone) because they were a bit less expensive, and arranged the tour with Alla via email. Let me know via PM if you have further questions.

TJ, Harold and Galen, Thanks for the information! It is really helpful and much appreciated. I'm feeling good about planning this trip, particularly given the long lead time; but I'll be in touch, Galen, if I hit any snags. Tallinn does sound great; in fact a friend of mine raves about it. I'll try to work that in. After many years of not being able to travel, this is going to be really cool. Take care,

Hi there, I contacted 4 companies. STB and Red October told me that they do not help FERRY passengers but only cruise passengers...Not sure why. (They may offer private tour for ferry passengers, but I wanted to join a group.)
You may want to check with them if it changed...but I asked them not too long ago. Alla Tours and Den Rus seems to say they provide tours for ferry or cruise passengers...I will most likely book with one of them for this summer. Thanks to Harold for all the links by the way! I am a young but experienced traveler and appreciate your help. Bon voyage!

We chose Alla tours for a two day tour from a cruise. You choose tour options including itinerary and size of tour. We opted for a group of ten plus a driver and guide in a twelve passenger van (the group was put together from our ship by Alla). It seemed like a good balance of price to small enough group to move easily. Everything with Alla was as advertised. If I went back, I'd have no problem using them again.

Valerie and Brad, Thanks a lot for the additional information, Joel