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St. Petersburg
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05-02-2008 1:20pm#1
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I broke up with the GF a couple of months ago and it’s my birthday coming up, so the lads booked a mad weekend away for us all – to St Petersburg in Russia! Were basically just going to go on mad one, I think Krakow or Prague would of been better, but they booked it as a surprise so I have to be grateful!
They think its mad cheap (which I know its not), is a really nice place (i’m sure it is), has loads of great pubs/clubs and that there is loads of beautiful Russian women who will be all over us because were Westerners (they seriously think this stuff!).So are they right? Is it worth it? Is it dangerous? Expensive as everyone says?
Also what are the Visa requirements?
Noting that were going to be going for the women and don’t want to pay for them, is this a good spot? Any advice would be great.
Thanks
Ahm, they really should have thought this through a bit more. You need confirmation and an invitation from your hotel in order to get a visa. If you move hotels you need an invitation from that one too. Basically they want to know where you are staying every night. Think they want evidence of health insurance as well as other stuff. Go to irish foreign affairs site, they'll have details. They can be got in one day at the embassy in Dublin, 100 euros I think it costs. I would definately get working on that one fast. I went with a female friend so can't really help you on the bar/cheap women thing
St. Petersburgh is beautiful (prefered Moscow) but very very expensive, glass of wine cost about 6 euros, shot of vodka in restaurant about 4 euros. Hardly anyone speaks English either, even in our hotel it was sign language all the way! We didn't go into any bars but I think you'll find the beer dear and I don't know if the women will be throwing themselves at ye. We went to some restaurants where they only had russian menus and just ate what they gave us, that was cheap enough, maybe 10 euros for a starter and main. But if you want a place with an english menu you have to go to touristy places which charge accordingly. Didn't think it was dangerous but we weren't a group of drunk lads so that could change things!
If it's booked now I'd just go. You should try and see some of the sites though, the Hermitage is great.
I don't think Russian cities are the poor places people think they are. Sure alot of the population are very poor but alot are either very rich or middle class. i couldn't afford anything in any of the clothes shops in Moscow or Petersburgh, you're talking BT prices all the way.0 -
Good call!so the lads booked a mad weekend away for us all – to St Petersburg in Russia!
No, it's not. But you can have live cheaply if you know where to go.They think its mad cheap
Almost unbeatable.is a really nice place
Yep.has loads of great pubs/clubs
Forget it. Should have been there fifteen years ago. You may have more luck doing this in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Khabarovsk, Donetsk or just about anywhere except St Pete, Moscow and Kievand that there is loads of beautiful Russian women who will be all over us because were Westerners
I use Alexei Maslennikov at http://www.ltour.ru -- he'll organize the paperwork and flats. All you've got to do is go to the Russian Embassy in Rathgar. Don't dream of staying in hotels unless you're absolutely desperate or you've never travelled beyond the M50 before.Also what are the Visa requirements?
Finally, here's an email I wrote to a friend of a friend a year or two back. Most of it should still apply.
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St Pete's one of the world's great cities -- magnificent architecture, friendly and educated population, great food + beer and excellent nightlife. Here are a few tips for the place:
Museums
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Be prepared to be ripped off when entering museums. Foreigners normally get to pay ten to twenty times what the locals pay and don't even think of trying to pass yourself off as a local, unless you know what you're doing. The foreigner entrance fee to the main art museums is around $10, with a small extra surcharge for still cameras and a large one for video cameras.
Hermitage (http://www.hermitage.ru/) -- bloody huge. Unless you're into art in a big way, your main memory of this may well be sore feet. The bulding's nice though, right on the river and worth several walks past. Many of the surrounding buildings were repaired for the 300th anniversary celebrations of the city, so they're in very good shape.
Russian State Museum (Canal Gribodoeva, http://www.rusmuseum.ru/). RSM's smaller than the Hermitage and with a nicer collection, too, I think. Well worth a visit.
Hygiene Museum -- On Italianskaya Ulitsa 25, just beside the RSM. Takes about 45 minutes to do, is free to enter, or was last time I was there. Extremely odd collection of things vaguely connected with hygiene. Particularly notable are the wax models of STDs, lesions, their collection of mummified domestic servants and Pavlov's patented Electric Dog Torturing Device. This place is unmissable.
Isaac's Cathedral -- ten minute walk south-west from the Hermitage. Never been inside it, but the view from the collonade on the roof is spectacular, since by law, there are no higher building in central St Pete. 'bout a dollar for locals, not sure what the foreigner price is.
Museum of Bread -- never found it.
Museum of Anthropology -- over the river from the Hermitage and beside the Naval Museum [fairly interesting]. Never been to the ahthropological museum, but one of my mates reports that it's full of deformed babies suspended in formaldehyde and other ghastly monstrosities. This isn't my cup of tea at all, but my mate found it interesting. Your mileage may vary.
Pubs and Bars
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Beer is cheap and good in St Pete and I recommend the sweetish local brew, Nevskoe, pronounced 'NYEV-skaya'. This fine stuff comes in two sizes, small at 300ml ('nul-tree') and large at 500ml ('nul-pyat'). So a full conversation with a bar man will sound like "Dva nyevskaya nul pyat, pazhalsta' (two large nevskayas, please!). But don't worry, most of them speak English anyway. Bars normally stay open until six in the morning and charge anything from €0.50 upwards for a large beer, although 50 roubles (~€1.50) is becoming a common price in many places. Other beers are Baltika (in several flavours), Sokol (yuk) and Botchkarov. I've never managed to get a hangover from Russian beer -- incredible, but true. Avoid drinking vodka with Russians, unless you are with friends and even then, be careful -- this isn't water you're drinking, though the rest of them seem to think it might be.
"Money is Honey" -- http://www.moneyhoney.org/. My favourite bar, but likely to be rather quiet mid-week. Directions to get there are at http://moneyhoney.org/where.html (Gostiny Dvor, on the directions' map, is a huge, but very elegant shopping center on the south side of Nevskiy, five minutes from the RSM and very easy to find. There's an excellent and cheap binocular shop on the upper floor, near the front on the east side, if yiz are looking for a pair of binox). Money Honey has a strange door policy that I've never understood, and, in addition to the door charge of a two dollars, you may well be patted down for an extra dollar or two in mid-evening. Don't worry, it's quite normal and all part of the zaniness that's Russia. Beer is about a euro a jolt and the clientele is mostly educated and friendly college students. Excellent live music too.
Metro Club -- http://www.metroclub.ru/ A bit of a hike from the center, as it's on Ligovskiy Prospekt 174, a coupla miles away half way down Nevskiy and right a good bit, but you can get a taxi there for 60 rub or so. It's a very modern and swanky three-floor disco cum bar thingy. One of the 'must see' things in Metro, is the 'no guns' sign over the main entrance. Clientele is the coolest of the youth of St Pete.
Restaurants
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I'm assuming that you don't speak or read Russian and don't want too much of a hike anywhere. There are several mc****e outlets in the city, but the food is violently crap, as it's mostly microwaved, and I won't tempt fate by telling you where they are. Avoid them if you see them.
Patio Pizza -- opposite Gostiny Dvor. Expensive for Russia, but popular with first-time visitors, as it's easy to find and quite safe, even if the food is a bit unenthusiastic. There's a functioning ATM a few yards away from Patio Pizza.
Cafe Idiot (http://www.times.spb.ru/citymap/restoran.htm, number 3) -- excellent food and peculiar, but friendly decor. Two minute walk from St Isaac's. South over the bridge from the Cathedral, go right one block, across the road, and look for the white light over the door and steps downstairs from the street into the restaurant.
Sadko's -- The main restaurant in the Grand Hotel Europe, on the north side of Nevskiy, over the road from Gostiny Dvor. Food is safe and reliable and quite tasty, but expensive for Russia. The toilets are clean and well equipped in the Grand Hotel and I've stopped more than once there when in need. There's also an ATM in the hotel lobby.
Cafe Stroganoff -- where beef stroganoff was first developed, so if you like that, it's a must. Stroganoff was Russia's first phone bar too and usually full of tourists these days.
Stockmann -- just beside Kazan cathdral, on Nevskiy. There's a large atrium cafe inside this building which does good ice-cream and really good fresh orange juice. Good for a breather.
Yakitoria - this is a new Japanese place just beside the Aleksandrinskiy Theater just 50 meters from Nevsky. This has the best sushi + japanese food I've ever had anywhere and is 30% of the Irish price for the same thing.
Other stuff
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You can get tours up and down the canals of the city which last about an hour. Well worth doing, as it's outdoorsy stuff which needs no effort. My advice is bring a beer, lie back and watch the city go by. Tours depart from the bridges near the RSM and elsewhere and all the tours are much the same. As a foreigner, you'll be done for 250rub for the privilege, whereas the locals pay 150rub, or less. Make sure that you don't sit too near the boat's loudspeaker for the tour guide, otherwise you'll be deaf at the end of the trip.
The local English newspaper is the St Petersburg Times at http://www.times.spb.ru/ and is available free around the city. It contains all the event listings and has a good list of restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels and so on.
The Fresh guide to St Pete at http://home.comset.net/freshspb/ is very funny, if slightly out of date.
For getting around the city, it's easiest to wave down a passing car and negotiate a rate with teh driver [or just say the street, or place, name, or show it to the driver on a map and wave some cash in the air]. Anything less than about ten minutes drive away should be 50 roubles, and everything I've mentioned in the city center is about that. Don't use the taxis as they are suspected to be controlled by the mafia, for money laundering reasons, and may rip you off. Waving cars down and negotiating is *very* common in Russia and can be quite fun. Ladas with single occupants give the best results. If you don't like the sound of this, try the metro system or the buses (both excellent services that Ireland would do well to copy), or the Ford Transit vans which ply their trade everywhere -- they're called 'marshrutkas' and are definitely the cheapest way of getting around.
If you get a moment, try and learn Cyrillic. It takes about half an hour to get the basic letters half-remembered and will make life much easier for you. There's a reference page at http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/language/russian-alphabet.GIF0 -
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How much did you pay? I haven't visited the city for around 18 months, but was there once or twice every year or so back to 2000. Prices have risen catastrophically since the early daysYe we have an aprtment booked which was quite expensive.
They can be, but in the city center, you may have trouble finding real cheap stuff, like, less than a tenner a meal. It's still possible though.Besides that, everything else looks quite cheap, like Robindch you listed the prices of meals and drinks and they seem really cheap?
The best of luck, but tourists have been pretty common in St Pete for years now and five Irish guys on the lash for a week or whatever isn't going to create much of an impression. Still though, the plumage of the average St Petersburgher is a cut above what you're likely to see lurching up and down Grafton St most nights of the week.So the russian women wont be to intrested in 5 irish lads then no?
You pay for the visa service provider (Alexei charged me $20 18 months ago), and then the Embassy charges you some other fee (around EUR30 AFAIR). If you go through a large agency, then you should expect to pay more. Alexei at ltour usually replies within a day or two and the Embassy should process within five working days. The Embassy charges way-over-the-top rush-processing fees and you should be prepared to spend hours up in the sweaty little consulate on Orwell Road while you wait for somebody up ahead of you in the queue to finish some dreary piece of unimportant business (like getting a passport) which throws the entire Russian Diplomatic Service into a state of stone-faced abeyance.And about the Visa, how long does it take to get? 100quid is a lot for a visa!
That's part of the fun of it all, in a certain light.0 -
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