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St Petersburg tourism and Mariinsky tips


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On ‎02‎/‎05‎/‎2019 at 11:02, Don Q Fan said:

I believe there is now a Faberge Museum  - the items therein are what were bought from Forbes - I saw Forbes in NYC and it was fabulous so if you like the Russian Imperial Easter Eggs go see!!!  When I went we took an escorted tour for safety reasons as I don't speak Russian.  Our very efficient guide took us to Hermitage/Winter Palace, Peter Paul Fortress, Admiralty, Yusopov Palace (Rasputin), Catherine Palace (Amber Room!!), Alexander Palace, Pavlovsk, the Peterhof was done en route back to the airport so we got no time to fully explore the gardens plus it was early April and they were only just removing the winter covers off the statues and fountains.  It is a huge city with HUGE buildings so hone in on what you really like - the Winter Palace was fab but I didn't get much out of the bits of the Hermitage we saw as the art works were not to my taste for eg.   Hotels might have special access too the one we stayed at offered guests access to the Golden rooms at the Hermitage for a fee.

At the Mariinsky OLD theatre don't get stalls tickets they're awful  as no rake whatsoever and I could not see Giselle as had huge man in front, so get a seat on one of the tiers.  We also went to Valery Gergiev's restaurant - just for a dessert - it was lovely the curtain ties were made of pointe shoe ribbon with pointe shoes on the end!  An interesting quirk was they weighed the ice cream at the Mariinsky on an old fashioned set of grocers scales when I went LOL!!  Definitely try the local blinis with caviar! Enjoy!

 

Thanks for Mariinsky tips - really helpful! 

Were you part of a tour group or did you find your own guide?

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I went both times (one was a day trip and the other a week long tour) as part of escorted tours as I speak no russian.  Our guides were both very good.  On the week tour the guide never really let us out of her eyesight apart from one afternoon - and then with strict instructions to be very careful on the Nevsky Prospekt - only one guest had an attempted theft the whole trip.  This was 2004 so not sure if it is any better now but best to have your wits about you anyway.  One weird thing was that a young Russian videoed the whole trip and then played the video to guests on the bus ride to the airport it was played on an unsecured fold up table on the bus - not very Health and Safety pc!!  Needless to say the video could be bought by anyone who wanted a copy!

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One thing I’d recommend is trying to learn what you can of the Cyrillic alphabet before you go so that you can read street signs and so on. (Don’t count on anything being in the Roman alphabet, let alone English.)

 

As for Russian itself: it’s a pretty challenging language so it’s probably best just to learn a few very simple phrases - please, thank you, maybe a few numbers and so on.

 

(One word I found useful in many situations in my first days was “mozhno” - “may I?” / “can I have?” / etc - pronounced with a neutral vowel sound at the end and not an O.)

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Our group had one robbery on the trip. We had had a lovely day being taught ballet and mime by a lovely old ex Mariinsky dancer who also  then insisted in giving us an impromptu pep talk in how to stay healthy and keep dancing ......but we were going to the theatre in the evening ( at the New Marrinsky to see Cinderella) so after a long walk we had to travel in the rush hour back to the hotel and the metro in the rush hour is PACKED! Anyway there seemed to be two blokes acting as a team so it turned out as one grabbed the purse of a member out of her bag ( yes I know NEVER have your purse partly exposed) she felt something had happened but the bloke next to her had already passed it to another bloke so when she turned round and having realised her purse had gone indicated to him she thought it was him he pulled his coat open as if to say " me, no not me" but we knew it was him....nothing you can do to be honest 

That was a tiring day as we had a 45 min turn around at the hotel out in the north of the city with no time to eat and then had to dash over to Mariinsky theatre which was miles away with the metro and another long walk and I remember during the second Act I could hardly keep my eyes open!! 

Definitely worth getting to grips with the Russian alphabet and if you go to a small out of the way cafe nobody will speak English!! A couple of us did for the experience and the menus there had NO pictures so was very glad had a small phrase book with me .......we somehow managed to order some chicken soup and bread .....which turned out to be extremely delicious as it happened!! 

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Re crime - I actually felt incredibly safe travelling in Russia. The metro stations have cctv and guards (admittedly not necessarily in the trains themselves) and so I would say your risk of getting pickpocketed is the same as in every other major city (London/Rome etc). In short - I wouldn't worry, just use your common sense. I think it helps if you dress in a way that doesn't particularly stand out and mark you as a tourist, and as in most places you look like you know where you're going so you don't make yourself a target. 

 

I found locals to be really helpful, and those that could speak English would often go out of their way to help and give directions/get us a taxi/just have a chat as they were interested in tourists! But definitely worth knowing a few words/reading a little bit of Cyrillic - to be honest you should be fine in central St Petersburg but if you do want to go elsewhere it may come in handy (but not necessary, I survived!). I went in 2017 if that's helpful, so before the Salisbury incident so not sure if being British now would give people a different perception, but I had no issues back then. 

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I have found that it helps enormously to buy entrance tickets online ahead of the day. This enables one to avoid the queues - for The Hermitage in particular.

I would recommend going to The Hermitage as soon as it opens in the morning and heading straight up to the floor with the Picassos etc. (look at a plan before you arrive). That way you can stand and take in these wonderful works of art without anyone in the way, as most tourists start their tours lower down in the building. 

 

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