Usually when we plan a trip I ask my friends for suggestions of what to do, where to eat, things to avoid, etc. When I started to ask about Russia, I found that only one of my friends had been recently and she only went to St. Petersburg. Due to this I decided to check out a St. Petersburg and a Moscow travel guide from the library. I read both of them cover to cover and made extensive lists of where to eat, what to see, and what to do while we are there. In both St. Petersburg and Moscow we stayed at centrally located hotels which I would highly recommend. Although there is a good metro system set up in both cities, the stations are not always close to the sites, and as a foreigner you will ALWAYS get ripped off on the taxi fare, so walking around is a great way to see things.
We started by booking our hotels. This is important as you will need a certificate from your hotel in order to obtain your visa. The visa application is quite straightforward but there is a lot of documentation needed. Once our hotels were booked we called each hotel (for our stay in both St. Petersburg and Moscow), and asked them to provide the certificate of our stay. They emailed us a form to fill out, and once we returned it they emailed each of us a certificate confirming our hotel stay. The visa application depends on the country you are applying from. My application was 5 pages long and I had to provide a list of every country I have been to in the last 10 years! Ben's application was only 2 pages, but he had to prove proof of residence in the UK, as well as proof of travel insurance, and 3 months worth of bank statements. We also had to get photos to submit with the visa application as every country has different standards for background color and photo size.
The visa application is then submitted through an agency. The total for my visa was £120 and Ben's visa only cost £60 as he applied using his German passport. The turn around time is quick and we had our visa's back in 5 working days. They have an expedited service if you want to pay more and you can have your visa the next day.
Next we booked the flights. We booked our flights in and out of St. Petersburg on British Airway and decided to take the Sapsan train from St. Petersburg to Moscow which takes about 4 hours. The flights to Moscow are shorter but when you include getting to the airport early and travel times it is quicker to just take the train.
We also booked tickets to see a ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. I am glad that we looked before hand as several performances were already sold out. I booked my tickets directly through the Mariinsky site and it was a much better deal than I seen on other ticket sites. We had also looked into going to the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, but there were no tickets available for the ballet the nights that we were there.
When you arrive in St. Petersburg there is a taxi desk after you pick up your luggage at the airport. They will request a taxi for you and you pay them, not the taxi driver. We paid 1000rub to get from the airport to the hotel.
Once you arrive at the hotel, the hotel will register you with the police. This is something that has to be done for all tourists visiting Russia. You don't have to do anything, but they do charge 200rub per person to do this, and if you are staying at multiple hotels, like we were, you have to pay this fee at every hotel.
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