Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
264
8
ESPECIALLY FOR KIDS
St. Petersburg doesn't seem like a child-friendly place at first, with its business-oriented
service industry and surfeit of strip clubs and casinos, but a little perseverance can make
your child's visit unforgettable. Russia's world-famous
circus
traditions wow children and
adults alike, particularly the acrobatics, though anyone sensitive to animal rights should
probably stay away.
St. Petersburg Circus
(
Tsirk;
&
812/314-8478
) performs at 3
Naberezhnya Fontanki (Fontanka Embankment). Tickets cost 400 to 1,000 rubles,
including a hefty 300-ruble foreigner surcharge for adults and children over 7. The clos-
est metro station is Gostiny Dvor. Performances are at 3 and 7pm, ticket office open
11am to 7pm.
St. Petersburg Zoo,
1 Alexandrovsky Park (
&
812/232-8260;
Metro: Gorkovskaya),
is a perennial child-pleaser, though it's in need of an upgrade. It costs 250 rubles for
adults, 100 for children and is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 5pm.
Boat rides along the Neva River or the city's canals (see “Organized Tours” below), or
simply boat-watching along the embankment, are good ways to give kids a sense of the
city's marine geography and history. The
Peterhof
palace and grounds (see chapter 17)
are well worth the journey if you're with kids and it's summertime. They can play in the
musical fountains, explore the grotto beneath the main cascade, and clamber through the
extensive park. For older kids with an interest in science or just in being grossed out, visit
the
Kunstkamera
(reviewed earlier in this chapter), with its bottled body parts.
Victory
Park
's many attractions include a Ferris wheel and other rides, though some are in sorry
repair. Victory Park and
Taurida Gardens
(both covered earlier in this chapter) also offer
skating rinks in winter and paddle boats in summer.
14
9
ORGANIZED TOURS
The best tours of St. Petersburg are those done by
boat.
The smaller boats that cruise the
canals give a closer view of the city's insides than the ferries that go up and down the Neva
River. The ferries and hydrofoils are the ideal mode of transport to visit out-of-town
sights such as
Peterhof
and
Pushkin/Tsarskoye Selo
(see chapter 17 for details). Water
cruises are of course available only when the city's waterways aren't iced over, roughly
May through October. You can pick up a canal tour on Griboyedov Canal just north of
Nevsky Prospekt, and on the Fontanka River just north of Nevsky Prospekt; prices run
100 to 200 rubles for a 1-hour tour. River cruises to Peterhof and along the Neva and
Finnish Gulf start from the embankment in front of the Winter Palace. The
Vodokhod
company (Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya;
&
812/740-5858
) is cheaper, but
Russian
Cruises
(Nevsky Prospekt 51;
&
812/325-3341;
www.russian-cruises.ru) offers more
enthusiastic service and English-speaking staff. Most companies offer a special White
Nights tour in late evening during June and July.
English-language tours of museums or other city sights are often organized by the
hotels. Companies to seek out for individual or group tours are
Davranov Travel,
which
runs bus trips to the key sights out of town and offers several museum tours (17 Italian-
skaya Ulitsa;
&
812/314-2344;
www.davranov.ru);
Russian Holiday
(44 Ligovsky
Prospekt
&
812/303-1041;
www.rusholiday.com); and
Eclectica,
offering tours of the
city and outskirts (44 Nevsky Prospekt;
&
812/279-2410
).
