DAY 1
D included
Arriving mid afternoon at St. Petersburg airport, we have a 45 minute drive into the city centre where we alight to stroll across the park to the great equestrian statue of the founder of the city, Peter the Great, which rears above the wide expanse of the Neva River. An introduction to Pushkin’s magnificent poem inspired by the statue, ‘The Bronze Horseman’, will set the scene for the city we are about to discover. Continuing to our hotel, we have time to settle in, and then enjoy a welcome glass of ice-cold vodka together before dinner in the hotel’s excellent restaurant.
DAY 2
B, L, D included
A day devoted to Peter the Great, founder of the city and historical giant, both literally and metaphorically. Travelling by private coach, the first stop of the day will be at the Strelka, the tip of Vasilievsky Island in the middle of the Neva River, with its mighty rostral columns and former Stock Exchange building. From here we survey the city and get our bearings. We then cross the river to the Peter and Paul Fortress and visit the Cathedral, burial place of the Romanovs, including the last Tsar and his family. Afterwards we visit the Menshikov Palace, from where Alexandr Menshikov, Peter the Great’s friend, ran Russia in the Tsar’s absence and after his death, until his own exile. Following a traditional lunch of cold and hot ‘zakuski’ we board the hydrofoil for the journey to Peterhof, Peter’s grand summer residence on the Gulf of Finland, with its riotous Great Cascade of fountains. Dinner in a Georgian restaurant back in St. Petersburg concludes the day.
DAY 3
B, L, D included
This morning is spent out in the country in Tsarskoye Selo, ‘the Tsar’s village’, where Empress Elizabeth bade her favourite architect Rastrelli to build her the magnificent Catherine Palace with its stunningly rich interiors (including the famous Amber Room). Catherine the Great added to the palace and oversaw the creation of the formal park. A lively contrast is provided by lunch, accompanied by folk songs, in the traditional Russian country restaurant, Podvorie. Back in the city we stop to admire the Smolny Cathedral and the Church on Spilt Blood, with its colourful striped onion domes, before visiting the Russian Museum in the Mikhail Palace with its outstanding collection of Russian art - from medieval icons to the 20C avant-garde. Dinner is in a nearby restaurant celebrated for its imperial style and traditions.
DAY 4
B, L, D included
Leaving our hotel on foot we walk to Palace Square, where the story of 18C and early 19C Russian architecture is laid out like a pattern book. We then enter the world-famous Hermitage Museum when it opens at 10.30. The first hour or so is devoted to a tour of the Winter Palace, the main residence of the Tsars, with its grandiloquent staterooms and more intimate private interiors. We then visit some of the many highlights of this exceptional collection, before a simple snack lunch within the museum. The afternoon is unstructured, allowing those who want to continue their exploration of the Hermitage to do so. Others might want to have time for shopping on St. Petersburg’s main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, or to take a private boat trip around the canals at the centre of the city. We attend a performance of either ballet or opera, as available, in the celebrated Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre and dine afterwards in a well-known restaurant frequented by opera-goers & artists.
DAY 5
B, L included
Our private tour of the Yusupov Palace gives a fascinating insight into Rasputin’s murder in this palace in 1916. Indefatigable to the last, en route to the airport we stop by the extraordinary gothic Chesme Church and the Victory Monument, erected to commemorate both the victims and survivors of the 900 day siege of the city in the Second World War.