May be you can help me further. I tried to find a train schedule from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
I entered Moscow and select Sankt-Pertersburg under Station/City search. Is it right?
I expect to see Leningradsky vokzal from Moscow and Moskovsky vokzal in St. Petersburg. What I did right?
Thanks,
I still have problem getting the schedule. Here is what I did.
I entered Moscow and saint under Get Trains for route and press search. However, I did not see Moscow Leningradsky station and Moskovsky station in St. Petersburg.
Is Train leave Leningradsky station in Moscow and Moskovsky station in St. Petersburg?
Thank you so much.
The train departs Moscow from the Oktyabrskaya station and arrives at the Petersburg Glavniy station. I think if you just eneterd Moskva and Sankt Peterburg it would have provided the correct stations.
Ruth
If you speak some Russian then I would feel comfortable in not having reservations outside of Moscow/St Pete.....I'd definately have some reservations for those two cities as hotels are generally expensive and at times extremely expensive.
In the other cities you mention - IF you can get by with some Russian the worst case scenario is renting a flat from someone. Several times in Russia I've been approached by older women at train stations offering to rent a flat.....BUT YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW SOME RUSSIAN TO KNOW THATS WHAT THEY ARE OFFERING!!!!
Personally I'm much less worried about registration in Russia with the new procedures that are now in place. I make it a point to stay at a "western" hotel the first couple of nights and beyond that I'm not concerned. Now that there is no paperwork to be taking around there is less of a risk of police/officials stopping you and giving you a hard time about your registration and whether or not it was done properly - the other thing I don't miss are the guys in some of the smaller interior airports that used to try to get money by questioning the validity of registrations in their OWN CITY!!! - Now there is nothing for them to look at or point to.
Part of the answer to your question comes down to age and how comfortable you are with "bumming around"....no reservations means that there is a chance you sleep in a train station or in a really bad cheap soviet hotel near a train station (and I've seen a few that you'd probably not believe :) )
In terms of planning your trip and train tickets don't discount using some of the independant people that offer services to travellers in the different cities - you find many with personal websites and often will handle some of those type of things for reasonable fees (like $10 to book a few train tickets) - just use common sense and don't Western Union off a bunch of money to someone.
Enjoy your trip - Russia is an interesting country to visit.
#12,
According to Lonely planet, Russia, there are 9 train stations in Moscow and the one go to St. Petersburg is Leningradsky station. None of them is Oktyabrskaya. The station in St. Petersburg is Moskovsky which is locate on downtown. Are they name differently?
Where is Petersburg Glavniy station?
please be advised that if one of your main reasons to go to Moscow is to see the parade, Red Square is sealed off to tourists and you will get nowhere close to the parade. It is by invitation only. I can attest to this personally and there are a number of travel blogs i discovered, where travellers attempting to do the same thing got nowhere near to the action
davidbdc - OP has a Canadian passport but was not born in Canada and has been advised by visatorussia.com that he needs to book all nights accommodations. Generally speaking (though not always) visatorussia.com has good reason to make such suggestions since they have lots of experience and often know in which situations it is likely that a visa will be denied.
That said, OP have you considered contacting other companies that offer visa support. You might want to try nevsky88.com for example.
I really don't care what LP says about the names of the stations. If you use the Your Train - CIS train schedule website, it says that the train leaves the Moscow Oktiabrskaya station and arrives at the Petersburg Glavniy station. I believe that these are the same stations and just different names. I know that Oktiabrskaya is the name of the train line between Moscow and Petersburg and that glavniy means main. Instead of arguing with me about the names, why not look at the website that I mention.
Also while it is likely that you cannot see the parade in Red Square there should be places along the parade route where it is possible to see the parade. The parade can't possibly start at the entrance to Red Square.
Ruth
Well I respectfully disagree with Visatorussia that you need all nights reserved prior to going.
Other than the visa application (which asks you where you were born), the OP will just be a Canadian when entering and exiting the country.
Most likely Visatorussia would like to earn a commission on the booking of the hotels.
I restate that with the new procedures that require the hotel to register you and the traveller has no paperwork to carry around regarding registration (you still have your exit card to carry) that things are MUCH easier than they used to be. I've come/gone three times in the past three months and there is a lot less hassle. I know several other people that go regulary and they have the same experience.