St Petersburg

silvine

Has anyone been, what's the best way to get there and can it be done on the cheap?

undo

I was in St Petersburg this summer. There are many options for getting there. What I did was travel to Riga and then fly from there with Air Baltic. The friend I traveled with wanted an even cheaper option and so took the overnight bus from Riga to St Petersburg.

On my way back, I used another route: The train from St Petersburg to Tampere and then Ryanair from Tampere to Dublin. This is a somewhat interesting route and gives you half a day to explore Tampere - but the total travel time between St Petersburg and Dublin is close to 20 hours.

Unless you cover the entire distance flying, I would recommend you do an overnight stopover somewhere on the way. It is more fun to check out some city on the way for a day or two than to be traveling non-stop for 20 hours.

As for prices, flying anywhere in Eastern Europe and then onward to St Petersburg is likely to be the cheapest option (such as going via Riga). The train from St Petersburg to Finland is rather expensive and would bump the price quite a bit. Also, getting train tickets in Russia is an adventure of its own .

St Petersburg is well worth the visit though - you will be glad you put in all the effort. Just make sure that you learn a bit of Russian or take someone with you that speaks it. Having no Russian at all, you will find it very hard to get by there.

silvine

Very helpful, thanks for that. Will look into Riga so.

cailinoBAC

This answer is probably useless because I don’t think Estonian Air fly Dublin-Tallinn any more, but if you happen to be in Tallinn (which is worth seeing) you could get the ferry (if that still operates….I’ll try to remember the name of the line). In fact, if you fly to Riga, you could see Riga, get the bus to Tallinn, see Tallinn, then on to Piter so you’ve had a mini Baltic tour! Check out www.inyourpocket.com for more up to date details as I went 4 years ago!

silvine

I've only got about four to five nights unfortunately. I reckon fly to Riga, spend one night there, get over night train, 2 in St. Petersburg and overnight train back to Riga and fly home.

All in all circa EUR300 Flights and accomodation.

undo

silvine wrote: »

[...]Riga, spend one night there, get over night train[...]

Are you sure the train is that much cheaper than a flight? The way I remember it, my Air Baltic flight RIX -> LED was rather cheap. And rather than spending all night on the road, all I needed was like 45 minutes.

cailinoBAC

While I'm not sure there would always be a flight to suit times (I remember checking this out once) do remember that on the train you'll be woken up in the middle of the night for the border check too. Still, trains in Russia are great fun.