St. Petersburg - Church on Spilled Blood
The Hermitage - Winter Palace
The Small, Old, and New Hermitages
SS Peter and Paul Cathedral
St. Isaac's
Peterhof, Part 1
Peterhof, Part 2
Catherine Palace
Pavlovsk, Part 1
Pavlovsk, Part 2
Yusupov Palace
Menshikov Palace
Our Intinerary
Visas
Getting There
Hotels
Getting Around
Restaurants
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St. Petersburg - Getting Around |  |
Getting around in winter can be a real problem. Unless you want to tackle public transportation (often your only choice is bus because there is no subway service to many landmarks, like the Peter and Paul Cathedral), you'll do a lot of walking. Which is fine in decent (i.e., warm or even just chilly) weather, although it will limit the amount that you can see in a day, because some of the attractions are large distances apart.
But in the winter, walking was a real problem, even bundled up, particularly at night. After a few days, we'd had enough of the icy cold. Plus several must-sees are out of town (the country palaces - Catherine, Pavlovsk, Peteroff - or too far for us to walk. So we ended up taking taxis several times at night and a few times during the day.
Which wouldn't have been too bad, but St. Petersburg has no metered taxis, only private cars, and they are very expensive. We were paying $20 - $25 for even a 5 minute ride! And we had to take a private car and guide (which we booked through our hotel, very expensive) to the country palaces, because that was the only way to get there.
It was so cold, that the first thing I did was buy a hat and a hooded scarf at a shop near the hotel called Paloma Furs (we passed several branches, look for MEXA on the storefront).