scandinavian countries and st petersburg

See Rick's 21-day Scandinavia itinerary by train for an idea of the fastest plan we'd recommend. Fast trains from Helsinki to St. Petersburg only take 4 hours each way but getting the Russian visa is an extra step that needs advance planning before you leave home.

We'd been considering a Sweden-Finland-St. Petersburg-Estonia (or some smaller combination), with the possibility of a 3-day maximum, no-visa visit to St. Petersburg if we arrived/departed by boat (i/e. cruise boat from one of the other locations). That would afford only 3 days in Russia, and we'd also like to get back to Moscow some day, so we've scrapped that plan for now. If St. Petersburg is your only Russian destination, and if 3 days is adequate for you, or if you acquire a full Russian visa, then 5 countries in 21 days is doable, but limiting what you can see and do in each country. We're now considering 14 days (still not enough time!) for just Norway, and figuring the other countries for another time.

We just returned from a 19 day trip to the region. We stayed in Copenhagen 3 nights before and 1 night after taking a 9 day cruise. We last flew to Oslo and took the Norway in a Nutshell train and tour boat to Bergen, Norway where we spent 2 nights.
Scandinavia is deadly expensive, and food and rooms on cruises are an incredible bargain vs. taking a ground trip on your own.

If you join an organized tour in St. Petersburg, your tour receipt replaces a full Visa required to enter the country. Otherwise, you've got to pay something like $500 and be "invited" to enter the country to obtain a Visa.

We found St. Petersburg to be an absolutely incredible city to tour. But it would be very, very difficult to navigate this city on your own. Remember the road signs are in Russian which uses a different alphabet. There are a bunch of fantastic tour operations that can show you this city very efficiently.