Matryoshka Dolls, Soviet-era busts and memorabilia, stately cathedrals dressed with gilded onion domes, vast landscapes of wilderness, Ushanka fur hats and babushka scarfs, and Cyrillic road signs – this is the incredibly diverse, unique cultural experience that is Russia tourism. Seeing all the country has to offer in one hit is a serious challenge, but Russia tour packages come as close as you will get.
Before you begin your tour comparison Russia, take a look at our top things to do!
The Church of the Saviour of Spilled Blood
In decorative homage to Tsar Alexander’s assassination at the same spot, St. Petersburg’s domed landmark has a medley of stunning interior mosaics spanning 7,500 m2 head to toe.
Stately St. Petersburg
The elegant city was planned by a visionary Tsar, Peter the Great, resulting in the stately build of domes and palaces over canals, along with the Hermitage Museum displaying a collection of over three million royal treasures. Time your visit with the White Nights Festival, held during the height of summer when the sun barely dips below the horizon at all, for an extra special experience.
Majestic Moscow
Russia’s capital separates Communist nostalgia with flaunting ambition, as Muscovites forever celebrate their internationally acclaimed city, warming bitter winters with emptied bottles of vodka. The Seven Sisters skyscrapers tower the Kremlin and the political stage of cobbled Red Square, home to Lenin’s Mausoleum, while history, museums, and night-long champanski parties mix with the ostentatious wealth of oligarch billionaires – all of which hypnotises only the most curious of travellers that journey here.
The most elegant performing arts
If you’re not a regular theatre goer, Moscow is the ideal place to see what all the fuss is about. Tiptoeing ballerina shoes spellbind the crowd to the echo of Tchaikovsky and Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre, while the Moscow State Circus and their leaping trapeze artists keep the audience equally rapt.
Master the Moscow Metro
The Moscow metro system holds fabulously ornate chandeliers and mosaics that extravagantly decorate Soviet stations, with the underground art gallery seen most vividly at Mayakovskaya station. Even if you prefer to walk around, it’s worth a trip underground simply to see this splendid train beautification.
A breath of fresh air at Lake Baikal
The world’s deepest lake proves barefacedly that Eastern Siberia isn’t all bleak. Holding 20% of the world’s freshwater, you can therapeutically swim or even drink Russia’s natural beauty. A number of trekking trails criss-cross the landscape, and the winter freeze brings a white blanket of snow that make ideal conditions for ice fishing, snowmobiling and husky dog sleds.
Visit Russia’s oldest city, Veliky Novgorod
Five-domed masterpiece, the Cathedral of St. Sophia, is Russia’s oldest church in the country’s oldest city, and features on the old five rouble bill. Other sights include the Millennium of Russia and the old city walls.
Ride the Trans-Siberian Railway
The legendary route of the longest railway system in the world allows you to book a ride for 9,289 kilometres from Moscow to Vladivostok for a transcontinental crossing of time zones and Siberian fields, right to the tip of Asia. Tours help organise the timetables and the overnight carriages, in one of the globe’s most epic overland journeys.
Vast wilderness and forests
Enormous parts of Russia are uninhabited, leaving the land for taiga forests, frozen tundra, broadleaf forests, grasslands and semi-deserts. Part of the 2.16 million km2 Scandinavian and Russian taiga finds its home in Russia, and the country contains a total of 40 UNESCO biosphere reserves.
Relax in a banya
Sweat it out in a Russian sauna, or ‘banya’, in one of the stately public bathhouses that exist throughout the country. One of the most well-known is Sanduny, which has occupied a place in the heart of Moscow since 1908 and is considered an important historic landmark.
Courtney Gahan is a serial expat, traveller and freelance writer who has bartered with Moroccan marketeers, seen the sun rise at Angkor Wat and elbowed her way through crowds on NYE in NYC
