St. Petersburg

Trip Start Dec 10, 2005
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24
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Russia  ,
Friday, June 8, 2007

We took the overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg. I thought I might actually get some sleep on this form of transport because I had a real bed but, alas, sleep eluded me. We arrived in St. Petersburg several hours too early to check into our hotel so we were herded onto the big bus with our luggage stored underneath and forced to join the guided tour with the large spanish group. None of us had showered and the 4 of us who paid for the "on-your-own" tour were less than happy to be stuck on the bus until after lunch (which was included on the guided tour but not on ours). If we stayed with the large group until afternoon, we would not have been able to see the Hermitage and the Peterhof  as they were both closed on mondays. We begged off the bus before lunch, leaving our luggage to be dropped off at the hotel when they arrived. We pulled out our maps and set off on foot. with our unshowered bodies and greasy hair, we found the Hermitage. Strangely, the Winter Palace eluded us during our entire stay canal
canal
 . We attempted to find it several times but couldn't quite nail it down. Our guide books were unclear, the staff at local attractions rarely spoke english and signage was either in Cyrillic or non-existant.
We used the famous subway system to get back to the hotel to retrive our luggage and get cleaned up. It's even more impressive than in Moscow. Apparently, this subway is the deepest in Europe and used to serve as a bomb shelter during the Cold War. The escalators just kept going down, and down, and down and... And at the bottom, the requisite little old lady sitting in her box watching people going up and down.
St. Petersburg reminded both Lelsie and I of Vienna, Austria. The architecture and wide
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Comments

travelallrussia
travelallrussia on Mar 15, 2008 at 06:06PM

Question
Hi, thank you for sharing your experiences with these two cities. I was wondering, what was the name of the firm that you booked your trip with? Not that I plan on booking with them, just wanted to know which firm does not properly distinguish private from group tours.

All best
Slava
from www.travelallrussia.com

lisa02148
lisa02148 on Jul 15, 2008 at 02:37PM

Re: Question
Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you--I didn't realize anyone could see my entries without my invitiation but that's ok.
Anyway, I live in Spain and the company we used is a local travel agency. I've since been on another tour with them and it was HORRENDOUS! Paco's in Rota Spain contracted with both the Russia comapny and the company that took us to Morocco. Neither experience was great.
Good luck on your trip!

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