Experience the land of the Tsars. Your private guide will personally lead you through the sights of Russia, providing interpretation and insights at your own pace. In St. Petersburg, drive with your guide along world famous "Nevsky Prospect" lined with marble palaces of Russian royalty and aristocracy. Explore the Hermitage Museum, St. Peter and St. Paul's Fortress. Visit Pushkin with Catherine's Palace and enjoy your tour to Hermitage. A superb private tour with the comfort of local support, transfers, and the flexibility of starting whenever you want. Pick up and drop off from the port are included in the tour cost.

Day 1
St. Petersburg
Port transfer with private vehicle and driver. Take a panoramic tour and get acquainted with the main architectural and historical monuments of St Petersburg, ride along its main streets and prospects, and enjoy its splendid parks and gardens. Drive along world famous "Nevsky Prospect" lined with marble palaces of Russian royalty and aristocracy, with most fashionable boutiques. View Monastery of Alexander Nevsky with its magnificent Trinity Cathedral and its cemetery where Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and other world celebrities were buried. Visit St. Peter and St. Paul's fortress, view St. Isaac Cathedral with «The Bronze Horseman». Drive by Summer Garden with the oldest royal stone palace and breathtaking collection of Italian statues and sculpture set in a natural surrounding. Stop in the Field of Mars with the eternal flame lit in the centre of the monument to victims of revolutions and wars, at the Resurrection Cathedral on the Spilt Blood at its background, one of the most unusual monuments of Russian Orthodox. Drive through the Square of Arts which is a perfect classical ensemble of the city, enjoy an overwhelming beauty of the third largest square in the world, the Palace Square with the Alexander Column, the Triumphal Arch of the general Staff building, and the Winter Palace complex. Entrance fee to Peter and Paul's Fortress is included in the tour price. Enjoy the excursion to one of the most beautiful summer residences of the Royal family, Peterhof. The world-famous palace, fountain and park is an outstanding landmark of Russian artistic culture of the 18th-19th centuries. It was founded at the very beginning of the 18th century by Emperor Peter the Great. Visit the Great Palace, which is the structural center of the Upper Gardens and the Lower Park, the high terrace, adorned with gold statues, the crystal jets of the Great Cascade and the terrace fountains. Learn from your private guide about the fate of the palace and the parks during the World War II, see the pictures representing the palace and in process of restoration works. Enjoy the spacious and airy rooms of the palace, adorned with rich moldings, splendid parquet flooring, exquisite carving, painted ceilings and canvases by great masters. Walk through the various fountains of different sizes and shapes in the lower Park, and admire the beautiful gardens. Entrance is included in the tour price. Kensington Tours donates a portion of our proceeds to our charitable initiative www.kensingtoncares.com which supports education-based initiatives in disadvantaged communities. Port transfer with private vehicle and driver. Enjoy your night on your cruise ship (booked by the client). St Petersburg is known as a cultural center and for its elegant buildings, the city is spread over 42 islands in the delta of the River Neva. In comparison to Moscow, which tended to be more Eastern in character, St Petersburg has always retained a European flavor and was intended as a ‘Window to the West’. It was built by Peter the Great in 1703 and remained the capital of Tsarist Russia for 200 years. Wide boulevards, tranquil canals, bridges and some of the best examples of tsarist architecture gave rise to the epithet the ‘Venice of the North’. The Palace Square and the Winter Palace are among the most popular attractions for enthusiasts of Russian history. The Museum of the History of the City gives a comprehensive picture of St Petersburg’s history. While exploring the city the visitor will inevitably see the Alexandrovskaya Column and St Isaac’s Cathedral -one of the biggest dome buildings of the world. Also worth a visit is the St Peter and Paul Fortress, a former prison that is now a popular museum. The grand Nevsky Prospekt, dominated by the spire of the Admiralty Building, is one of the city’s main thoroughfares and is lined by opulent buildings. Outskirts - There are a collection of spectacular estates outside the city collectively known as the Summer Palaces. Petrodvorets is a former summer palace of Tsar Peter the Great and is known for its beautiful cascades and fountains. The tsar designed the initial plan which was intended to rival Versailles. Oranienbaum, the Grand Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, and Pavlovsk are other stunning estates.

Day 2
St. Petersburg
Port transfer with private vehicle and driver. Enjoy a guided tour of the Hermitage and admire the gems of the collection. During the tour you will see the State Rooms of the Winter Palace, a part of the collection of paintings of Old Masters and other exciting exhibits and works of art. Value the splendour of the Gala stair-way, Peter's Memorial Hall, the Armorial Hall, the Gallery of 1812 with its numerous portraits, the Pavilion Hall and its various amusements and other gala rooms. You will enjoy the works of applied arts, precious items and paintings. The collection of Western European art, numbering over 600,000 items, is considered to be one of the finest in the world. It presents all the stages of the development of art from the Middle Ages to the present. Enjoy masterpieces by outstanding Western European artists, as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Michelangelo, Francisco de Goya, Renoir, Picasso and others. You will have an opportunity to see such world-famous masterpieces as works by Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Gauguin and others. Admire the richest collection of ancient and early medieval items, works of art from Ancient Greece and Rome, fabulous treasures of oriental culture and wonderful European art. Entrance fee to Hermitage Museum is included in the tour price. Enjoy lunch at leisure (not included in tour price). Take a half day tour to Pushkin, originally named Tsarskoe Selo (Tsar's Village), famous for the marvelous Catherine Palace and park. Many historical films, dedicated to Russian history and tsars, were shot in the interiors of the palace. The town, also known as Pushkin in honour of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, was the main summer residence of the royal family. The Palace features splendid interiors. The collection of the palace includes a large number of precious works of art, such as furniture, porcelain, statues, canvases, including personal belongings of Russian emperors and members of their families. Visit one of the most remarkable interiors of Catherine Palace, the Amber Room. During the palace excursion you will get to know about the mysterious history of the Amber Room and see the restored interiors. Your private guide will tell you the story of the Catherine Palace's construction, and you learn about the tragic pages of the palace's history, connected with the Nazi occupation during the World War II. Entrance is included in the tour price. Port transfer with private vehicle and driver. Overnight at Overnight on the cruiseship ( client booked).