Fodor’s Moscow and St Petersburg
A Travel Guidebook on Russia’s Two Largest Cities
If you're visiting two of the world's most interesting cities, different despite both lying in Russia,then the Fodor's guide to Moscow and St Petersburg could be useful.
Russia is such a vast country that a first visit covering just the two great cities, Moscow and St Petersburg, is understandably a common trip. Recognizing this, perhaps, Fodor’s has a guide out for Moscow and St Petersburg. The seventh edition was released in 2006, so the information is relatively up-to-date in a country where things change as much and as often as Russia.
Features of Fodor’s Moscow and St Petersburg
The first fifty pages of the Fodor’s guide give some useful overview, pre-trip planning informaiton. This includes suggested itineraries for different trip lengths, details of time-sensitive events like festivals and holidays, and facts on practicalities like train and plane travel, passports and visas, tipping and customs.
The remainder of the book is taken up by four major sections: Moscow, Moscow Environs and the Golden Ring, St Petersburg, and Summer Palaces and Historic Islands. Detailed information about attractions is given, with enough history or background to make it interesting, plus plenty of visiting information including opening times, prices and contact details.
What seems especially authentic about this guide is that it realistically says you need three weeks to really see Moscow. Of course, it also provides selections of attractions for those with as little as three days, but the authors clearly appreciate the riches of Moscow. For St Petersburg, up to 10 day itineraries are given.
Is the Fodor’s Guide For You?
Fodor’s Moscow and St Petersburg is focused enough that there is pretty much all the information you’ll need for a trip to these two cities – so if these are your focus, this book could be suitable. If you’re traveling more widely across Russia, for example on the Trans-Siberian, then you might be better off with a wider or more regional guidebook. For a city trip, the entries on sights and attractions has a good mix of practical information and interesting facts and background. It seems that most of the contributing writers to this guide actually live in Moscow or St Petersburg, rather than being travel writers who just pass through, which might result in this more authentic and interesting flavor.
One downside is the lack of suitable maps. While a few maps of various parts of the cities are included, they’re either too sketchy to be useful or, because they’re in the middle of a book, they’re not the kind of maps you can easily pull out and look out while you’re walking down Nevsky Prospekt or strolling past the Bolshoi Theater.
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