Russia: 4 Nights – 5 Days
Hotel Options:
4 Nights – St Petersburg, Russia Belmond, Grand Hotel Europe
St.Petersburg, the ‘Venice of the North’, is a fascinating city, home to the Czars of Russia from 1732 to 1917. This itinerary will show you its highlights, while you enjoy elegant luxury and one of the city’s finest and most historic hotels.
Description
The Northern Capital of Russia is home to some of the country’s best palaces, monuments, and theatres. Over the centuries the Czars developed the city into a breathtaking architectural ensemble: we will find you a fantastic and luxurious base to explore everything this exciting and vibrant city has to offer. On the first day of your visit you will be picked up by luxury car at the airport and shown the sights of Nevksy Prospect, the city’s most famous boulevard, on your way to the hotel. After your first evening in St.Petersburg, perhaps sampling the caviar at the hotel’s famous vodka bar, you will be collected the following day for some sightseeing in the city.
One of our team of local experts can escort you on a guided tour of the Peter and Paul fortress in the morning, before showing you the best of the city’s 18th century palaces and elegant canals. In the afternoon spend as much time as you like enjoying the masterpieces of the Hermitage museum, housed in the city’s most impressive building, the Winter Palace on the immense Palace Square.
During the rest of your stay we can include tours outside the city to Pushkin, where you can visit the magnificent palaces and gardens built by the Czars in the 18th and 19th centuries. The highlight for many is the chance to see the Catherine Palace, famous for its lavish decoration, culminating in the ‘Amber Room’. The next day travel to the Baltic Sea to see the fountains of the ‘Great Cascade’, the world’s largest fully functioning 18th century fountain complex, at the ‘Peterhof’, Peter the Great’s summer residence. Or, if you would rather stay in the city, you could visit the Yusupov Palace, and see where the owner tried, and eventually succeeded in murdering the monk Rasputin.
We can also arrange visits and activities that are a little more off the beaten track – why not ask us about a visit to a vodka museum or an afternoon painting your own Matryoshka dolls or learning to prepare a stroganoff with a real Russian housewife! For aficionados of ballet and classical music no visit to St.Petersburg would be complete without a visit to the world famous Mariinski theatre: European Voyages can not only book the best seats but we can even arrange a memorable backstage tour.
Call our specialists and we can tailor make an exciting itinerary of whatever duration you like.
When to travel
The main tourist season is between June and August, when the weather is the warmest. Standout seasons to visit St Petersburg are late spring (May or June) and early autumn (September or October), when the city’s parks are filled with flowering trees or colourful leaves. The deepest, darkest part of winter is undeniably cold but if you are prepared it can be an adventure. Furs and vodka keep people warm and snow-covered landscapes are picturesque. A solid snow pack covers the ground from November to March. The city gets fired up to ring in the New Year, when Muscovites emerge from their warm homes into the winter night for free concerts and fireworks.
