Stockholm St Petersburg ferry

Stockholm Guide

Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and is spread across 14 islands in the south east of Sweden and lies at the mouth of Lake Malaren, by the Stockholm Archipelago and the Baltic Sea. There are many cultural institutions based in Stockholm and the region in general is home to three of Sweden's UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These are the Drottningholm Palace, Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery) and Birka. Stockholm was also named European Capital of Culture in 1998. With over 100 museums, Stockholm has one of the highest number of museums of any other world city. The Nationalmuseum is perhaps the most famous and contains the country's largest collection of art. It has some 16,000 paintings and 30,000 objects of art handicraft. The oldest items in the collection date back to the 16th century and has been expanded with works by artists such as Rembrandt and Antoine Watteau.

Stockholm's port is a major gateway to Sweden and is therefore an important port for both freight and passengers travelling to and from Finland, Russia and the Baltic States. The port is close to the city centre where all of the usual facilities you would expect to find in a major city are located.

St Petersburg Guide

The Russian city of St Petersburg is often referred to by its residents as simply 'Piter' and was formerly named Leningrad. The city has definitely had an interesting past with over 300 years of history, with more than 200 of it as the capital city of the entire Russian Empire. Today, St Petersburg is an amazing city to visit and more than lives up to the vision of Tsar Peter the Great which founded the city in the 1700's. Winding their way through the city is the Neva River and a number of canals, along which you can see grand palaces and a number of other important buildings that date back to the 18th century. St. Petersburg is where Russian ballet was founded and has also been the home of many acclaimed composers, such as Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Many of the best sights in St. Petersburg are to be found around the actual city centre and its main road, the Nevsky Prospekt. If you take a stroll around Palace Square, known locally as the Dvortsovaya Ploshchad, you will see the lovely architecture of the Winter Palace, or alternatively take a cruise on one of the city's canals on a water bus, stopping of at the Mikhaylovsky Gardens en route.

Note: Ferry passengers are allowed stay in Russia for 72 hours without visa as long as they booked their excursion through officially licensed ferry companies.