travelhook

My husband and I will be going for a four day trip to St. Petersburg this July. We are coming from Tallinn by bus and leaving by train to Helsinki. I am deciding whether to join or hire a tour guide or we go independently.

I have read about those who have joined tours or have hired guides and majority are from those on cruise tours.

I am wondering how these guided tours go about and how it can be done so quick that all the sights have been covered in a day. Does it involve walking or driving and seeing the sights from the bus/van/car windows and a few minutes stop for pics taking?

For those who have done it, how long does it take to go to each museum? I am curious because one tour agency describes that in a day ---- can cover the city sights, going to Catherine Palace and St Paul and Peter Fortress. By reading all these attractions, it seems to me each of these will need more than a couple of hours to look and enjoy them.

I would like to hear also and get tips from independent travelers who did the tour themselves. Is safety a concern? How did you ride the metro with those cyrillic scripts? We are thinking of getting a taxi as means to the end if we don't get a tour guide.

It will be interesting to hear from both sides and I do appreciate it. I need to finalize this trip by this weekend and see to which direction I need to go to. Please help and advice.

Thank you.

(Note: we have not joined a big tour group before and we have done our travels mostly on our own. But Russia seems intimidating to me as I am worried about understanding the cyrillic scripts. With maps on hand, maybe we can get by).

thursdaysd

I traveled in Russia mostly independently. In St. Petersburg I had a guided tour for a couple of hours - just a drive by. It was raining, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth it. I also had a local I had met on the train from Vilnius take me to Pushkin by marshrutka, returning on the commuter train, but with a good guide book you could do that on your own. I did the rest on my own, including the hydrofoil to Peterhof.

However, I did learn the Cyrillic alphabet before I went - I'm lousy at languages but found the alphabet easy. You really will find it easier to get around if you learn the alphabet.

Cathinjoetown

My sister and I had a private guide in St. Petersburg--this was several years ago. We found her invaluable--a former Intourist guide, her English was better than mine and the depth of her knowledge was incredible.

We also struck out on our own but I believe my memories of St. P are particularly vivid due to her insight. Unfortunately, neither of us can find her details.

Perhaps talk to your hotel about small tour groups or private guides, particularly ones which can get you access to things which may be difficult to see otherwise. However, I expect everything is more open now than we were there around 1996.

djkbooks

We were very glad we hired a private tour guide. We could have done it on our own, but she saved us a lot of time and provided excellent commentary in English (she, too, spoke better English than ours!) everywhere we went. I found her through recommendations here on Fodor's and we could not have been more pleased. We communicated often prior to our trip, and she was invaluable in helping us plan our time.

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

lincasanova

I have a report on our two weeks in SP. It was basically onour own as our Russia friends were working and we were not staying with them. We DO suggest to get online museum (Hermitage) entrance or you will lose a lot of time. Also, we had to wait quite awhile to get into another Palace. Our host, who had accompanied us that day on our way to the airport to drop off our son, was astonished at the lines and was sympathetic with all the tourists waiting so long everywhere.

This report is a bit long but I trust there will be some information pertinent to your inquiries.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...s-and-more.cfm

nytraveler

I've been to St Pet twice - the seocnd independently when we were there 6 days - and we only scratched the surface. In a day you can see the outside of a lot of things and have 5 minute photo ops in front of a few others - and perhaps spend 30-40 minutes in a museum that deserves the whole day.

If you need to speed see, a tour is the way to do it - but do understand how little you will see.

laurie_ann

Here's a great website I have been using to learn the Russian alphabet. It organizes letters into groups which makes them easier to remember and gives pronunciation and example words.

http://knol.google.com/k/learn-to-re...-in-75-minutes