Trip to St Petersburg - any tips or recommendations?

[Amandine.K]

Hi,

We are planning on going to St Petersburg at the end of July for a long week-end with my husband for our wedding anniversary.

We were told that it is wiser to book our trip via a travel agent who would take care of everything so that we can get our visa in due time without problem.

Any recommendation on what agent we should use?

Also for the ones who went there already, what are the must-do and the things/areas to avoid? do you think we could get a decent feel of the city by spending 3 days/2 nights there?

Kiitos

[glorius]

If the weather is good, visit Peterhof.
Actually, there are plenty of things to do there, depending on your preferences

[dmd]

We too are planning a trip to St Petersburg but found that the time and cost required for travel documents and hotel stay was too much for family of five two of which have American only passports.
(three are EU - Finnish passports) I imagine you need a bit of advance planning. Please let me know how it goes so we can anticipate a visit in the future. We were in Leningrad back when USSR was an "evil" empire. I am sure there have been a lot of changes since 1982! Of course Hermitage, Winter Palace, and Zagorsk are timeless wonders worth the travels beyond the city. Please let me know what you were able to discover.

[glorius]

Just came back from there and crashed my car slightly on my way back .
I went through out the city from North to South and seems that city infrastructure improved a lot in recent years.
The city seems to be overcrowded after calm and quite Heslinki, there are a lot of tourists also (probably because of the visa-free regime for those who arrives by cruise ships).
Next time in two weeks I'll go there by bus (it cost 15-35 euro) and will stay in the hostel (20 euro) with my finnish mates.

[mie]

We made a trip there with Nevatours and had a good time. http://www.turunnevatours.fi/english/en_index.php