If you have a lot of free time in St. Petersburg, you may still experience the daily life in the city with a metro ride or enjoy an excursion and a vodka tasting in the following guided tours:

St. Petersburg Metro, the Underground Palaces * Vodka Museum with Tasting

St. Petersburg Metro, the Underground Palaces

St. Petersburg’s metro (the tube) is not only the most popular transport in St. Petersburg, but also the pride of the city, for the stations of St. Petersburg’s subway can be very easily confused with palace halls and are well worth a visit. Particularly magnificent is the red, the first of the 5 subway lines in St. Petersburg, which opened its doors to passengers in 1955. Here, during the metro tour you can see the stations decorated with marble and granite, bronze reliefs and chandeliers, stylised lamps and torches, mosaics, monuments and marvellous columns made of pressed glass. With its 110m depth, St. Petersburg’s metro is the deepest in the world. During the excursion you will see the most beautiful metro stations, learn the different types of the stations’ construction and get information about the history and functions of the metro in St. Petersburg, with its current 63 stations, the transmission capacity of 2.3 million people per day.

The Metro Tour takes about 1.5 hours; this excursion goes well with the Peterhof visit by car or museums located not far from metro stations such as the Russian Museum, Alexander Nevsky Monastery or the Church of the Resurrection.

Vodka Museum with Tasting

Since 2008, there exists in St. Petersburg a museum, dedicated to the Russian vodka that is believed to be the Russian most traditional drink. The history of this ancient beverage lives on before the eyes of the visitors in the museums exhibition, from vodka creation, through its perfection by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who is represented in the museum with a wax figure, to the vodka monopoly, vodka-ban and the modern time with the countless brands and producers of today. An employee of the museum will guide the visitors through the exhibition, but in this museum, you not only get spiritual nourishment, but are also invited, at the end of the tour, to a tasting where you can try different types of vodka and some snacks that strictly belong to the ritual of drinking vodka.

However, if you are really hungry and want not only drink Russian, as "vodka" in Russian means "little water", but would like to also eat out Russian, you can simply stay in the in-house restaurant for dinner - here you do not only get contemporary Russian cuisine, but also historical Russian cuisine from the tsars’ time.

The excursion takes about 1-1.5 hours, including the tasting; the Vodka Museum tour goes well with the visit of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Yusupov Palace, the Hermitage or a Boat Trip, or can be included into a City Tour.