3 Best Things to do on St Petersburg shore excursions with Dancing Bear Tours

The Hermitage is St. Petersburg's most popular attraction, and one of the world's utmost repositories of art and antiquities. For several travelers, it is the major reason to visit the city on the Neva, and its vast collections could take days if not weeks to explore. Most visitors, however, wish to pack as much as possible into one morning or afternoon at the Hermitage, and this tour is intended to make sure that you miss none of the collection's stunning highlights.

It is ironic that the Hermitage – the grandest museum on  the planet, enormous and labyrinthine, with a collection of three million items sprawling across five buildings as well as admired by more than four  million visitors per year – derives its name from the French word “ermitage”, meaning the 'abode of a hermit'. But this contradiction takes us back to the story of collection's origin which you will learn from our guide.

Have a driving city tour to enjoy beauty of St Petersburg itself which is often called “museum under the open sky” with photo stops at the most famous places  including The Church of our Savior on the Spilt Blood, The Spit of the Basil Iceland, Art Square and Palace Square to mention few.

Visit Catherine Palace with “the eighth wonder of the world” – Amber Room and walk in Catherine Park which surrounds the palace

Of all the Imperial Palaces none is more evocative of both the heyday and twilight years of the Romanov’s than those at Tsarskoe Selo, (Tsar Village) which is situated 25 km from St Petersburg. This small town can boast of two world famous palaces – Catherine Palace (named after Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great) and Alexander Palace (a wedding gift from Catherine II to her favorite grandson, future Alexander I). The name of the town is also associated with the great poet Alexander Pushkin, who studied at the town’s Lyceum (a school for boys from Noble families) – so in 1937 its’ name was changed to Pushkin to commemorate the century after the famous poet’s death. Tsarskoe Selo was once a model town connected to Pavlovsk and St Petersburg by Russia’s first train line (built for the Imperial families’ convenience) and featuring electric lightning, piped water and sewage works. Its numerous villas for nobility were turned into orphanages after the Revolution when the town was renamed in Detskoe Selo – “Children Village”.