St Petersburg May 05 Independent or Specialized Tour?
 

I'm starting to dream about a St. Petersburg trip next year, and hoping to be in Russian for Easter (which I believe is May 1 next year). We're flexible about time-- perhaps a week, with a few additional days in Moscow.

Typically I travel independently, but on this trip will likely be joined by a friend. We are both history/art/culture fiends, so have thought about joining a small specialized tour if we can find something appropriate.
Has anyone had experience with specialized purveyors of art/cultural tours, of the university or museum-sponsored type? The only reason we'd do this is to enjoy these sights in the company of other knowledgeable travellers.

Of course, if we can't find the right tour, we'll happily do it on our own..so advice about hotels, tour guides, etc. would be appreciated.

Check Red October Tours. I?m going on a cruise next May and will be in St. Petersburg for 2 days. This is a highly recommended tour company. I wrote to them but they are still busy with this season?s tours and will email me a in a couple of months. I?d rather be with a tour guide than independent: language problems, not having to get a Visa ? RO will do that for my group; less expensive than taking the ships tours.

Monica ((F))

The Smithsonian Institution and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are organizing tours of St. Petersburg, but not next May. (The Met one is at New Year's and costs only $ 8,250...)

Martin Randall in London had a 7-day tour of St. Petersburg in May of this year for 1,840 GBP (including air from London); they might have one next year as well. Martin Randall has a very good reputation for cultural tours. You can have a look at www.martinrandall.com

Thanks Monica and Eloise for the good tips. Martin Randall, in particular, looks like the type of thing I was hoping to find. And departing from London is an extra bonus. I was hoping to do a stopover in London, and this makes it more likely that "fellow travellers" will be British and not American-- a more international group, from our (American) perspective.
THANKS!

We took an indpendent tour of St. Petersburg this summer and hired a private guide. The guide was an art major in college and was excellent. She charged $70.00 per day for two people. We saved a considerable amount of money by not taking a specialized tour.

Red October comes highly recommended, but they are very expensive, and they customize tours/activities for your particular group.

We hired a private tour guide who was fabulous. She can also assist with acquiring a visa, booking a hotel, etc. For more information, e-mail [email protected]

dmahalek,

Do you still have that point of contact for your tour guide?

djkbooks, I'll email you later today. Would love your information too.

Thanks!

Monica

I can personally vouch for Martin Randall. I attended their Vienna Music Festival in 2003 and will be going on their Sicily archeological tour next spring. Most participants in Vienna were British, although I'm Canadian/American. While not inexpensive, MR's tour are less costly than the Metropolitan Museum or Smithsonian's, and they do a fabulous job IMO. I imagine they'll repeat St. Petersburg next year.

Thanks everyone...Martin Randall does sound excellent, and I like the fact that they seem to specialize in exactly the type of trip I am looking for... however I will have to see if they will have something in the right time frame. so I am very much interested in guided recommendations.

DJK books-- thanks, I will email for more info. Others will guide suggestions: I'd appreciate an email at [email protected] let me know how I can contact you, if you are willing to help ;-)
One advantage of a private guide: both of us actually studied Russian decades ago...with a private guide, we could ask the guide to force us to speak Russian-- at least for the simple things!

BTW: I just figured out that on this board, a search for "St." is different than "St"-- couldn't find this post to thank people!

The web link for our guide is

http://www.tourservice.sp.ru/

The guides name is Olga. If you contact her, you can use our name as a client reference if you wish.

Dan Mahalek

If you speak some Russian and/or can read some Cyrillic, St. Petersburg is much easier to navigate on your own without a guide. Moscow is doable but is more difficult basically due to its size.

It is very important when navigating to use a Russian language map. All the street signs are in Russian. English language maps are this side of useless because you cannot compare them with the street signs.

In St. Petersburg, if you need maps, stop at Dom Knigi (House of Books) on Nevsky Prospect. They have a large selection of guidebooks to just about everything as well. Dom Knigi is quite near the Nevsky Prospect Metro stop.

I was recently in Moscow and St. Petersburg on a tour but broke off from the tour a few times to do my own thing in both Moscow and St. Petersburg and had no problems. There were days when going solo was just better use of my time. I generally met the group at the evening performance (It was a theater, arts, and literature trip and we had performances almost every night). I do speak a little Russian and can read Cyrillic but slowly. Cyrillic, by the way, is phonetic, so once you know the letters, there is no problem with the signs on the Metro. I also found I could understand the announcement of the stops. No problems there either.

The problem I have with the cruises is, if you chose that, you get less time in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but what you do does depend on your own priorities. I found even a week in Moscow and St. Petersburg was not enough (especially for St. Petersburg). If you choose a cruise, I would encourage you to add days to Moscow and St. Petersburg on either end. You cannot possibly hit even the highlights of either city in 2-3 days. I would have liked 2 weeks in St. Petersburg as there is so much to see. You could even spend 2 weeks at The Hermitage.

You might find the story of my elderhostel tour helpful to give you ideas. My trip report, which is very length, is posted on the independenttraveler.com. This is the site on the web:

http://boards.independenttraveler.co...play.php?f=140

The St. Peterburg portion of the trip is the second half of the trip, so look at Parts 3 & 4. I also wrote a post on the site that you will see about Shopping in Russia.

I cannot wait to go back but probably would choose to go on an independent trip. My Russian is very basic but I found that they understood me (even if I didn't always understand them). I found using the Pimsler Russian Series to brush up my Russian really helped. I am still doing it because I got hooked. Yes, I know the trip is over. I am up to Pimsleur Russian 3, Lesson 10 and am determined to finish it all (through the 32nd lesson of Russian 3 which ends it all). I simply play the CD's everytime I am in the car. It does work and I can even do things like conditional verb tenses for basic verbs. I really recommend it!

Thanks everyone...you've all provided fabulous resources, and they are getting me excited about planning the trip...and getting back to some Russian lessons. I was planning to use Pimsleur, because I found their system so helpful before other trips. Only problem: your pronunciation gets so good, that people think you know far more than you actually do, and it is easy to get into trouble. Wonder how much I'll be able to call back up from those college days decades ago...

Hi there, I just spent 6 days in Moscow and 6 days in St Petersburg. Hi highly recommend going independent to St Petes. Once you pick up a map, the city is simple to navigate. All the big tour books (like lonely planet) will provide you with a comprehensive list of things to do and see. Once at the museums,i was able to locate guides to take us through. At the Hermitage and the Russian Museum, english and russian speaking guides were easily available and very knowledgable. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Dilly
[email protected]

In response to the last two posts on this thread:

You are right about good pronunciation from Pimsleur. One time I asked someone for directions in Moscow and got rapid fire Russian in return. After I said I was American and to please speak more slowly, we resorted to sign language to communicate. It was very funny!

Museums are sometimes out of brochures and books in English. At The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg I had to take one in French. That was fine for me because my French is more than adequate (a lot better than my Pimsleur Russian), but might be a problem for some of you.

I'd love to hear hotel reviews and recommendations too, it you have any rants, raves or safe choices...

We stayed at the Pulkovskaya which is about 5 miles from Nevsky Prospect....no problem as a metro stop is about 400 meters away. It is near a shopping area with an American 24 hr. supermarket about a 100 meters walk away. The hotel is large and modern with very nice rooms including a flat screen tv...we stayed in the main hotel block and had plenty of hot water. There is an excellent German restaurant and micro brew with superb beer in the hotel. The airport is about a 5 min. ride...nice when catching an early flight.

Thanks Dan, I'll check it out...

For information about independent travel to Russia you may find more information on the Lonely Planet Thorntree at: http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/

For a review of hotels see:
http://www.russianguidenetwork.com/new_page_29.htm

While knowing a bit of Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet will be useful for getting around on your own, a private guide is highly recommended.

There are many licensed private guides who are full time students (pursuing advanced degrees) who work as tour guides in the tourist season and charge very reasonable (low) hourly rates. A year or two training is required for a basic license. Additional study, and a separate license, is required for each venue (museum, cathedral, palace, etc.). A licenced guide bypasses the ticket lines and provides a magnificent tour in English. (Ours, at the Hermitage, also took us to the "staff" restrooms to which her license admitted all of us, thereby avoiding the long, long lines at the public restrooms.)

A local guide is also familiar with all forms of transportation and will arrange "reliable" taxis for the lowest fares.

Most venues do not have tours in English or English signs, including for paintings, exhibits, etc.

Canal Boat Tours are not available in English (only Russian), and this is a not-to-be-missed experience in St. Petersburg. Our guide knew which company offered the best and longest route (and everything along the way).

Obviously, a local knows all the best restaurants and shopping, too!

I cannot imagine trying to fully enjoy the richness of the culture, history, architecture, cathedrals...without a local guide at least part of the time.

We also thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent with her during meals asking all sorts of questions.

We picked up a complimentary map of the city at one of the hotels where we stopped to use the ATM in the lobby. This map was fantastic - better than any available for sale anywhere.