Saint Petersburg Travel Forum

Hi,

Is Tzar Village worth visiting if we are only going to Saint Petersburg for 2 days?

Should we stay at the Hermitage longer instead of going there? We are big art lovers.

Thanks

never been in Tsarskoe Selo (Tsar Village) yet, but the Hermitage will fulfil your expectations of art :-) if you have only 2 days, in my opinion, it is better to walk around the city

We have been to the Hermitage before, but our tour guide sped through the rooms and we were left wanting to see the museum more closely. This time we want to hire a private tour so that we can be at the museum for as much as we want. It was our new tour guide who suggested the Tsar's Village.

I really would like to walk around the town. is Nevsky Prospekt a nice place to go for a walk and maybe some food?

that reminds me, I would also love some restaurant recomendations.

THanx

maybe you will get audioguide? it is possible in English (as far as i remember it's around RUR 200, EUR 6). by the way, i recommend you to come to the open hours of Hermitage because then there will be not long queue (or I was not lucky :-)) Oh, Nevsky Prospekt walking is nice, for me, especially at evening time. of course, there are a lot of restaurants of the different cuisines.
usually in every hotel there is a city map with the marked places of the general sight-seeings. So maybe you will see some other places around Nevsky Prospekt.
Maybe it will be good for the walking along one of the rivers of the central part of the city as Fontanka River or Griboedov Chanel (if you hadn't that before :-))

The Hermitage is fantastic and worth most of a day to see. Not only is the art collection world-class, but the palace itself has one of the most beautiful interiors that you will ever see. It is huge (bigger than the Louvre in Paris or the Metropolitan in New York) and takes hours to get through. When we were there, we used a guide, which was worth every cent. In addition to the Hermitage, I would recommend visiting two churches - St Isaac's and Spilled Blood. They are both beautiful and very different from each other.

On Day 2, you could do either Tsarskoye Selo (Catherine's summer palace) or Petrodvorets (Peter's summer palace). They are both huge and worth seeing, but will take up most of the day gettig there and back. Pavlovsk, Paul's summer palace is near the Catherine Palace.

If you don't have a full day for day #2, then stay in the city and check out some of the other museums and buildings (St. Peter and Paul Fortress, Russian Art Museum, Yusupov Palace, etc.). Nevsky Prospect is the main boulevard, and has its share of shops, but not a must see.

Make sure that you verify which places are open on which days. Every so often, we found things closed on an unexpected day.

Tsarskoye Selo is worth to visit but if you have only 2 day it's better to see the city because it takes the whole day to visit Tsarskoye Selo.

I was at Catherina Palace in Tsarskoye Selo last Sunday with VTer Rose from Canada and we saw the famous Amber Room. It's impossible to get tickets in summer because of many people - you need to stay some hours in line to get a ticket 9if you are not with a group).

My advice is: if you plan to come to St.Peter again you can go to see Catherina Palace with Amber Room (now it's the best season to visit - not so crowdly). But if you don't plan to visit our city in future - see the city.