Welcome to Enchanting Journeys

Welcome to majestic Russia. After you exit in the Arrival Hall at Terminal? - St. Petersburg Pulkovo International Airport, subsequent to customs & immigration, you will be met by the Journeys representative who will ensure your comfort & transfer you to the hotel, help you settle in and provide you with some useful tips for exploring the area as well as discuss the program for the next few days.

Once a desolate swamp, Russia's imperial capital is today a dazzling metropolis whose sheer grandeur never fails to amaze. There is something about St Petersburg that gets under your skin.

Built from nothing by westward looking Peter the Great, St Petersburg was from its inception to be a display of imperial Russia’s growing status in the world. Fine-tuned by Peter’s successors, who employed a host of European architects to add fabulous palaces & cathedrals to the city’s layout, St Petersburg grew to be the Romanovs’ showcase capital and Russia’s first great, modern city, a status it has retained despite the capital moving back to Moscow following the revolution. Despite all that history has thrown at it, St Petersburg still feels every bit the imperial capital, a city largely frozen in time.

St Petersburg is an almost unrivalled treasure trove of art & culture. You can spend days in the Hermitage, seeing everything from Egyptian mummies to Picassos, while the Russian Museum, spread over four sumptuous palaces, is perhaps the best collection of Russian art in the world. Add to this world-class ballet & opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, classical concerts at the Shostakovich Philharmonia and a slew of big-name music festivals over the summer months, and you won’t be stuck for cultural nourishment. If contemporary art is more your thing, there’s also the fantastic Erarta Museum, showcasing the best in modern Russian art, and a small but buzzing gallery scene.

Whether you’re cruising the elegant canals, crossing one of the 342 bridges in the city, or just watching them being raised over the mighty Neva River at night to allow ships to pass through, you’re never far from water in St Petersburg, which has earned the city unsurprising comparisons to Venice. The similarities don’t stop there, though: any wander in the historic centre will reveal canals lined by Italianate mansions and broken up by striking plazas adorned with baroque and neoclassical palaces.

The city’s White Nights are legendary: those long summer evenings when the northern sun barely dips below the horizon. Revelry begins in May, when spring finally comes to the city and parks are filled with flowering trees, and peaks in mid-June, when the sky doesn’t get dark, festivals pack out concert halls and the entire city seems to be partying over the brief but glorious summer. But don’t worry - even when the skies are grey and the ground covered in snow, St Petersburg’s rich culture still dazzles and delights

Check-in at the hotel.

Balance of the day at leisure or perhaps you might want to explore (we will be happy to offer suggestions & make arrangements for one of the many Optionals if you the time to discover). Overnight. 

Morning around 10:00 am, you will be met by the Tour-guide & embark on a 4 hour sightseeing tour of the city.

You will see all the major sights of this beautiful city. Visit the world-renowned Hermitage Museum, housed in the Winter Palace, Peter & Paul Fortress - a fort which guards the city of St Petersburg, located on the island, facing the Hermitage and dominating River Neva. Built as a fortification during the Russian-Swedish war, it was never used as a fortress and its bastions were turned into political prison cells where a son of Peter the Great, Prince Alexei - a famous pretender to the throne, Princess Tarakanova, writer Radischev, Decembrists and revolutionaries were held as prisoners. Peter & Paul Cathedral, designed by Tresini, contains the remains of Russian rulers since 1725. Pass along Nevsky Prospect, St Isaac’s cathedral & Church on the Spilled Blood.

Return to the hotel by 02:00 pm. Or you may stay in the city for further exploration and make your own way back to the hotel.

Morning  meet the Tour-guide again and embark on a unique experience synonymous with St. Petersburg - a visit of the iconic Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace - originally created to house the magnificent collection of art of Catherine the Great.

The Hermitage fully lives up to its sterling reputation. You can be absorbed by its treasures for days and still come out wanting more. The enormous collection (over three million items, only a fraction of which are on display in around 360 rooms) almost amounts to a comprehensive history of Western European art. Catherine the Great, one of the greatest art collectors of all time, began the collection in 1764. Nicholas I also greatly enriched it and opened the galleries to the public for the first time in 1852.

It was the post-revolutionary period that saw the collection increase threefold, as many valuable private collections were seized by the state, including those of the Stroganovs, Sheremetyevs and Yusupovs. In 1948 it incorporated the renowned collections of post-Impressionist & Impressionist paintings of Moscow industrialists Sergei Shchukin & Ivan Morozov.

As much as you see in the museum, there’s about 20 times more in its vaults, part of which you can visit at the Hermitage Storage Facility.

Spend 4 hours there & return to the hotel around 02:00 pm. Or you may stay in the Museum for further exploration and make your own way back to the hotel.

Morning, meet the Tour-guide at 9:00 am & depart for a 4 hour excursion to visit one of St Petersburg’s most prized Palaces in the town of Pushkin (formerly called Tsarskoye Selo) just south of the city. Pushkin is home to one Russia’s grandest royal estates - the Catherine Palace, built in the 1700s as a residence for Catherine I and once called the Palace of Tsarskoe Selo.

Stroll around in the blue-and-white baroque palace, sometimes dubbed the Pushkin Palace. Originally modest, the palace was remodelled by Catherine’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth, in the mid-1700s, who turned it into the extravagant baroque residence of today.

Marvel at the rococo state rooms and halls embellished with stucco, frescoes and marble, and visit the showpiece - the extraordinary Amber Room.  Covered in amber panels that replicate the originals looted by the Nazis in World War II and subsequently lost, this spectacular room is a vision of shimmering amber work, gold leaf and mirrors. The original room was dubbed the ‘8^th Wonder of the World’, and today’s replica was made using 13,000 pounds (6,000 kilograms) of amber. 

The display of the Catherine Palace Museum covers the almost 300-year history of this outstanding edifice and presents the work of architects involved in its construction& decoration in the 18^th & 19^th centuries and also with the achievements of the restorers who returned the palace to life after the Second World War. Of the 58 halls destroyed during the war years, 32 have been recreated.

After your tour, stroll around Catherine Park, the gardens that surround the residence. Walk along the tree-lined avenues and admire the picturesque buildings that speckle the lawns.

Not far from the Catherine’s Palace there is the Lyceum where the great poet Alexander Pushkin studied. 

Return to the hotel by afternoon.

Finally, it is time to say good-bye.

Check-out of the hotel by 12:00 noon (if the departure time is later in the evening, we will request the hotel to allow the use of the hotel facilities & leave the luggage at the Bell Desk if you have the time to walk out). 

In time, you will be met by a Journeys Rep, who will ensure your comfort & transfer you to Terminal? - St. Petersburg Pulkovo International Airport, for your onward journey.  B

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