Day 1
Departure from Helsinki to St.Petersburg with Allegro train.
Our guide and the bus are waiting for you at the railway station and on the way to your hotel there is a panorama sightseeing tour of the city. During the tour you can see all the main sights and get the feeling of this huge city. At the end of the tour you will arrive to your hotel in time for the check-in. Straight after the panorama tour you can take part to our optional excursion The Treasures of The Hermitage.

Optional excursions:
The Treasures of The Hermitage 55€ / person
Children under 12yrs 41€ / person

We will visit the huge art museum The Hermitage with a Finnish speaking guide. The bus will take you back to your hotel, or alternatively you can stay in The Hermitage or in the city centre by yourself. The duration of the excursion is approximately three hours (incl. transfers).

The State Hermitage Museum

is the second-largest art museum in the world, it was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky.

Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property.

Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five -namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre – are open to the public.

Petrodvorets is the best known suburbs of St. Petersburg.

This gem of Russian 18-19 century architecture used to be the favourite and most beautiful summer residence of the Royal family. The world-famous palace, fountain and park ensemble of Petrodvorets is an outstanding landmark that witnessed huge stratum of Russian history.
The Lower Park is an ideal place for walking. Not only will you amaze at various fountains of different sizes and shapes but also learn the symbolic motive of each sculpture complex. You get stunned at the view to the Great Palace and the Fountains Cascade from the gulf of Finland.

During the tour you will visit the Great Palace which is structural center of the Upper Gardens and the Lower Park. You will enjoy its spacious and airy rooms adorned with rich moldings, splendid parquet flooring, exquisite carving, painted ceilings and canvases by great masters.

Day 3
Breakfast at the hotel, check-out at 12.00.

Optional excursions:
At the footsteps of Peter the Great 65 € / person
Children under 12yrs 60€ / person

We will depart the hotel around 10.30 for the trip (you may take your luggage to the bus). We will travel to the Peter & Paul Fortress, the birth place of the city, where we do a walking tour and visit the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which is the final resting place of the Russian Czars. Later we are transfered to the St.Isaac’s Cathedral. Duration of the excursion is approximately three hours (incl. transfers).

If you do not wish to take part to the excursion, you can leave your luggage to the hotel luggage room and spend some time in the city. The transfer back to the railway station leaves from the hotel.

The first structure to be built in St. Petersburg, and thus the birthplace of the city, it never served its intended defensive function. Instead it has had a rich, hugely varied, and sometimes sinister history as a military base, a home of government departments, the burial ground of the Russian Imperial family, the site of groundbreaking scientific experiments, and a forbidding jail that held some of Russia’s most prominent political prisoners.

Today, the Peter and Paul Fortress is for the most part under the auspices of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, with a number of permanent and temporary exhibitions charting the various aspects of the compound’s past. While the central visitor attraction is undoubtedly the Peter and Paul Cathedral, one of St. Petersburg’s most striking buildings.

St. Isaac’s Cathedral was originally the city’s main church and the largest cathedral in Russia. It was built between 1818 and 1858, by the French-born architect Auguste Montferrand, to be one of the most impressive landmarks of the Russian Imperial capital. One hundred and eighty years later the gilded dome of St. Isaac’s still dominates the skyline of St. Petersburg. Although the cathedral is considerably smaller than the newly rebuilt Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow, it boasts much more impressive fades and interiors.

The cathedral’s facades are decorated with sculptures and massive granite columns (made of single pieces of red granite), while the interior is adorned with incredibly detailed mosaic icons, paintings and columns made of malachite and lapis lazuli. A large, brightly colored stained glass window of the “Resurrected Christ” takes pride of place inside the main altar. The church, designed to accommodate 14,000 standing worshipers, was closed in the early 1930s and reopened as a museum. Today, church services are held here only on major ecclesiastical occasions.

All of our excursions needs to be booked in advance, no later than 2 weeks before the departure. Minimum six participants are required to complete the excursions.