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This June, my boyfriend and I are traveling from the U.S. to Finland. He would love to visit Russia, specifically St. Petersburg for a few days. We have looked into applying for visas, but I have some uncertainties about whether this side-trip will be possible. Both our passports expired this year and we are currently waiting for our new passports to arrive in the mail. They should be here in the next few weeks. We leave mid-June, so in the best case scenario we will have a little under three months to apply for a visa. Everything we have found says that we would need to send our physical, original passport in the mail (no copies) to the Russian embassy with the application. I've heard that the visa application process takes forever, and I'm not sure that I want to send my actual passport across the country when we're not sure how long it would take to get it back. Apparently if you go with a travel agency, you don't need to send your actual passport with the visa application, the agent accepts a copy and does the application themselves. Is this true, and if so, does anyone have any recommendations for how to look for a good agency? We've read that you need to have a formal invitation in order to apply for a visa. Apparently a hotel can invite you, but how would one go about getting invited? Finally, I'm not overly concerned about political tensions between the U.S. and Russia, we're just a couple of tourists, but it's something I've thought about. Should I be worried about this at all? If we don't go to Russia, we will stay in Iceland for a few days instead, but it's been his dream to visit Russia for years and it would be great if we could make it work.
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Mar 7, 2016 06:03
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 12:27 |
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Just go to Iceland instead. That's what I'd do. Seriously though, if you book a hotel just ask them to make an invitation for your visa. You can also just call a hotel in advance and ask them how this would work, never had to do this myself. The other option is to find someone (friend of a friend etc) who lives there and have them do it. As for mailing your passport, this is a very common approach, and I'm not a big fan of that either. The whole process just takes forever and the passport might get lost somewhere, great! A travel agency might be able to do this for you but at some point the passport will probably have to get to the embassy to get stamped/visa glued on. Still, you have plenty of time to get this sorted out. Good luck!
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Mar 17, 2016 16:09
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My wife, sister and I did a trip to Russia from Canada back in 2008 or so. The trip was amazing, we visited Moscow and St. Petersburg. Both were surreal experiences after seeing Russia through the lens of Bond movies, etc for 30 years. Normally we are do-it-yourself travelers, but with Russia we opted to talk with a local travel agent who could recommend an agency to work with in Russia. I don't remember the timeline, but the visas, hotels, etc were taken care of with no problems. St. Petersburg is easy to tour on your own (compact, walkable) and we opted for no guides or anything and had no trouble. I believe we had someone from the agency meet us at the train station and take us to the hotel, though. All in all, I would recommend going to Russia if it's something you have an interest in and we'd recommend just paying the bit the extra to have the paperwork handled by experienced people. A decent travel agent should have a network that can recommend a reputable agency in Russia that they've worked with before. I checked my old email, but I can't find who we used.
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Mar 20, 2016 23:22
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From Helsinki you can take a ferry to St. Petersburg and stay visa-free for up to 72 hrs. I am not 100 percent postivie on this, but I don't see anywhere that this exception doesn't extend to US citizens as well. Basically you have to pay for the ferry and part of the time be with an organized tour, but you still get to see St. Petersburg without all the cost and hassle normally involved for Americans to get a Russian visa. Some more info: http://anastasia.stpeterline.com/en/Goodtoknow/Visafreerule.aspx http://www.ferrycenter.fi/index.php?1839 This is just from some quick googling. A little more research and you should be able to get an idea of how much it will cost/etc.
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Mar 22, 2016 13:44
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Thanks for the advice! After much discussion on how best to enjoy ourselves and minimize stress, we have reserved tickets for a visa-free trip through a Finnish travel agency. We chose the particular company as it seemed to offer the most free time. From what I've read on various sites, the bare minimum a person needs to be visa-free is the ferry ticket, a bus ticket into town, and a hotel reservation. The package we went with had optional tour groups for an additional fee but it sounds like it wasn't absolutely necessary, so we are getting dropped off at our hotel and the rest is up to us. Does that sound right for those who have experience? Has anyone reading done a visa-free trip into Russia?
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Mar 24, 2016 17:09
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Koivunen posted:Has anyone reading done a visa-free trip into Russia? Sorry, I'm a dirty-dual-national that just goes to Russia whenever. That being said, take a look if any Finnish travel agency offers the tour via train. The (Finnish) Helsinki - St. Petersburg train is like 3 1/2 hours, is really nice, and last time I went round trip was something like 70eu, even though I went during business peak hours.
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Apr 14, 2016 12:01
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OWLS! posted:Sorry, I'm a dirty-dual-national that just goes to Russia whenever. I have the impression that the only visa-free way to go to Russia from Finland is via the ferry.
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Apr 23, 2016 21:24
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Bumping this thread to strongly recommend a trip to Russia if anyone is thinking of it. Passport was easy. Letter of invitation came from a website that you enter your info and they instantly email you a pdf of invitation. Took my passport in to the agency that handles them in Canada and picked it up 2 weeks later. Can rush for more money and 1 week. Moscow has become my favourite city in the world over the other 30+ major cities I've seen on every continent. Just so much amazing history, art, architecture, and incredible food. All for good prices. Everyone I've met has been very friendly and helpful despite my minimal Russian skills. And I felt safer in Moscow than I do in most cities in Canada at night. Police stationed at metro stops deter the pickpocket scams common to many cities where they rob just as the doors close. I'm sure the city will be even better once all the construction wraps up on the major streets. I used metro exclusively and never got lost once. St. Petersburg is also pretty nice but I found Moscow to be a more beautiful all around experience. Especially after all the hype everyone expresses when comparing the two. St. Petersburg feels like a Russian city trying to become more European but I've experienced enough of that in all the other euro cities. Moscow was truly unique and I wish I had another few weeks to just explore that city alone.
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May 23, 2016 17:17
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 12:27 |
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Just following up in case anyone reading this thread is considering traveling to Russia. I am so glad we went, it was amazing. We booked through a Finnish travel agency and took the St. Peter Line ferry overnight into St. Petersburg. It was visa-free so we arrived at 8am on a Wednesday and had until 6pm on a Friday to explore, and arrived back in Helsinki early Saturday morning. We stayed in a hotel on Rubinstein Street, which was a great location close to really good restaurants. We could have just booked directly through St. Peter Line, but the travel agency had really good reviews, and ended up having excellent customer service. St. Petersburg was absolutely breathtaking. I am glad we did visa-free just to get a taste of Russia, but if we go back we will get actual travel visas because three days just wasn't enough time, we could have spent it all in the Hermitage. Everything there is enormous and opulent, it's hard to wrap your head around the scale of it all. SPB was loaded with tourists, I didn't feel like we stuck out at all, and I felt totally safe the entire time, even walking the streets late at night. I really can't say enough good things about our experience, we had a fantastic time, and if anyone is thinking of going, definitely go! The only thing I would have done differently was to get smaller bills when we changed our euros into rubles. My cards wouldn't work in Russia so we brought all cash, and were given several 5,000 ruble notes. Hardly anything there costs that much, not even a fancy dinner with booze, and if you don't have exact change you get very dirty looks and possibly scolded. We managed to break the 5,000 bills at really tourist-heavy places but it would have been nicer to have smaller bills. It was a great experience, I would go again!
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Jul 12, 2016 06:17
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