I'm signed up for the ETBD St. Petersburg trip august 15,2011, want to travel on to Moscow for a few days. How many days in Moscow would be recommended. Also, this is my 7th trip with ETBD and I like the way RS trips take us to the villages, not just large cities. What can you recommend? A guide referred by ETBD suggested 4-5 days and is mostly in Moscow. Suggestions and hotels please
Posted by
Seattle
4637 posts
Hi Babs, Moscow is huge so 4-5 days would not be too much. To make it on your own we recommended that you learn the Cyrilic Alphabet as the signs for subways, busses, etc. would not be in English.
Posted by
Danville, VT
12040 posts
"To make it on your own we recommended that you learn the Cyrilic Alphabet as the signs for subways, busses, etc. would not be in English." I agree completely. You don't have to know the Russian language itself, but being able to transliterate the signs is invaluable, particularly for words that sound the same in both languages. For example, restaurant looks like "PECTOPAH", but sounds similar when pronounced.
Posted by
Myrtle Beach, USA
12315 posts
It is funny how, when you get a handle on cyrillic, you can translate a lot without knowing Russian. PECTOPAh sounded out is "restoran". Subway signs are simply cyrillic for "metropolitan". Even St. Petersburg's Russian Standard Vodka (too perfumey for us), is simply "Russian Standard" spelled with cyrillic letters.
Posted by
Knoxville, TN, USA
7209 posts
Having just returned from Moscow and St Petersburg I highly recommend using Dan Petrov, a local guide, for Moscow. He was absolutely fantastic and very very affordable. The local signs in Moscow were totally unreadable for us. tel: +7(495)375-95-98 mobile phone: +7 926 460–1715 email: [email protected]
www: http://waytomoscow.com
Posted by
Prague
11 posts
My wife and I visited St. Petersburg in September. We arranged tours with Palladium Travel. They were very flexible and responsive to our questions, happy to go along with what we wanted. We contacted them via their website www.stpetersburg-tours.ru I think the best guide we had ever had was the one in St. Petersburg. His name was Serguei.
Posted by
OP
Puyallup, WA, US
3 posts
Thank you, Alex. I hope to take a Russian class locally and hope it'll go overe since it is winter and sometimes folks tend to stay home vs taking classes this time of the year. I'm making notes of tour guides, thank you. BK
Posted by
Seattle, WA, United States
873 posts
Babbette, if you are really interested in learning some Russian and/or practicing speaking, there is a Russian cultural center in Seattle that you might want to look into. If you just learn the cyrillic alphabet, keep in mind that we have 7 extra letters. But it is still a good tip - especially considering how many businesses/people do the whole "write out English words phonetically in Russian" thing these days.
Posted by
Seattle, WA, United States
873 posts
Babbette, if you are really interested in learning some Russian and/or practicing speaking, there is a Russian cultural center in Seattle that you might want to look into. If you just learn the cyrillic alphabet, keep in mind that we have 7 extra letters. But it is still a good tip - especially considering how many businesses/people do the whole "write out English words phonetically in Russian" thing these days.