It's served buffet style in the main dining room, there is also an a la carte restaurant available. The ferry operator, St Peterline, is Russian, as is naturally the food, with a Scandinavian slant. The cost of the buffet is 30 Euro, if you pay online in advance, about 50 USD, includes a glass of "champagne" and wine and dessert (really good), so I did that, and was happy.
St Peterline operates 2 ferries, the Princess Maria, running from St Petersburg to Helsinki and return, and her much larger sister, the Princess Anastasia. She runs from Stockholm, overnight to Tallinn, Estonia, then overnight to St P., only on Saturdays and Wednesdays from Stockholm. The fare on both of them is one of the great travel deals I've found, 52 Euro Stockholm to St P, oddly the fare St P to Helsinki is more, 68 Euro. That's for a berth in a shared, same sex 4 berth inside cabin. Which I know sound a bit crowded, but in practice turned out just great. Leaving St P there were three of us in the cabin, two friendly young guys from Slovakia and an equally nice guy from St Petersburg, and on the two nighter from Stockholm, just one roomie, another really nice guy from St P. No one snored and the contact with these nice people was a highlight of the trip.
The whole reason for taking a ferry or a ship to St Petersburg is that if you arrive thusly, and stay less than 72 hours, and leave thusly, and take a city tour, you do not need to have a Russian visa. So that's what I did! There were a couple of glitches along the way, which I'll get into later. Dinner was plentiful, the dining room is mostly empty in the photos because I ate at the end of the first seating, the maitre d' sort of yelled at me because I was staying too long as I went for dessert. Oh well! Having dinner prepaid like I did was really good because during the full day of sightseeing that I did in St P that day, I knew there was a big old dinner waiting on the ship.
